Look at any business phone system and you will trip over acronyms within about ten seconds. IVR, DDI, hunt group, auto attendant. None of it is complicated once someone explains it without the jargon. So here is exactly that. These are the features that make a small business sound organised and professional, minus the confusing language.
Direct dial, or DDI
DDI stands for direct dial in. In plain terms, it means each person gets their own phone number that rings straight through to them, instead of everyone sharing one main number. A customer can save a specific person's direct line and reach them without going through reception. On a modern system you can give every team member a direct-dial number without any extra wiring.
Extensions
An extension is the internal line for one person or one desk. It is what lets colleagues call each other quickly and lets calls be transferred around the team. Each extension can have its own direct-dial number attached to it.
Auto attendant, or IVR
IVR stands for interactive voice response, which most people know as the auto attendant. It is the recorded menu that greets callers and points them in the right direction. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for accounts. It makes a one-person business sound like a proper operation, and it stops calls landing on the wrong person. You record a greeting, or have one read out automatically, and set where each option sends the caller.
Hunt groups, or call groups
A hunt group is a set of people who can all answer the same incoming calls. When a call comes in, it can ring everyone in the group at once, or ring them one after another until someone picks up. This is how you make sure a call to your sales team gets answered even if one person is busy or away. No more calls ringing out because the one person who handles them is on lunch.
Business-hours routing
This simply means your phones behave differently depending on the time of day. During opening hours, calls ring the team. Outside them, callers hear an out-of-hours message or go straight to voicemail. You set your hours once and the system handles the rest.
Call recording
Exactly what it sounds like. Calls are recorded and stored so you can go back to them. It is useful for training, for settling any who-said-what questions, and for keeping a record of important conversations. On a cloud system these recordings are saved automatically and are easy to find later.
Voicemail to email
When someone leaves a voicemail, you get it as an email with the audio attached, and often a written transcript too. That means you can read or listen to messages wherever you are, without ringing in to check a mailbox.
Putting it together
None of these features are just for big companies. A sole trader or a small team can use every one of them to sound polished and never miss a call. On Virtual Voice Office they are part of the system, and we configure them for you, so you get the professional setup without having to learn the jargon or fiddle with settings.
If you want to see how these would work for your business, we are happy to walk you through it.
0191 543 3488 | sales@virtualvoice.uk | virtualvoice.uk
