Call answering services

[robatacs]

We want to use a call answering service but with our home phone the divert service is either on all the time or off.

In other words you can't have divert if "unanswered and when busy" as an option.

The problem could be because we are using a "virgin residential" land line.

Has any one any experience with this problem?

We are happy to change provider if necessary, or go to a virgin business line (which is ntl) but that is very, very slow.

Any help appreciated
thanks

Lesley

 

[Josh_Farmer]

We want to use a call answering service but with our home phone the divert service is either on all the time or off.

In other words you can't have divert if "unanswered and when busy" as an option.

The problem could be because we are using a "virgin residential" land line.

Has any one any experience with this problem?

We are happy to change provider if necessary, or go to a virgin business line (which is ntl) but that is very, very slow.

Any help appreciated
thanks

Lesley

Have you considered using VoiP for your home phone?

 

[darren atkinson]

As suggested above, what we do is have a VOIP from Voipfone.co.uk and then we just point that at the call answering service.

All our calls go direct to them however I'm pretty sure that you could configure the number to only divert to the call answering service if your main line was busy if this is what you wanted.

I'm sure there are others on this forum who could clarify what I have said.

Using a Voip number is pretty cheap and gives you a lot more flexibility rather than being tied to a normal 'landline'.

 

Any reason why you are using a home phone for your business? Use this opportunity to get a separate business number and you can decide when to divert it to an answering service.

 

[maxine]

There are a few different ways you can work with this and I'll just try and outline what our other customers are doing to see if that makes sense for how things may work for your situation

Option A: Use your home number for business

If you use this and want to control when you switch the divert on and off then all calls go to a CA agency as you know. This means that you will get charged by the CA agency on a per call basis usually excluding sales calls.

Option B: Use home number with an IVR

You could have all your calls on divert to the agency as option A but have an IVR in place for as soon as the call is diverted. This is a press 1 for this and 2 for that feature and you could use this to self direct calls so that the agency only deal with option number 2 and for option number 1 it may get diverted back to you or your mobile.

Option C: Have another phone number for business

We use voipfone.co.uk and recommend to clients a lot as it's easy for them to control via the control panel themselves. I think it's around £2.50 per month for the actual phone number so hardly big bucks! This way you can give a different (business) number out to clients and have these handled by the CA Agency. If they then want to pass a call through to you then there is the option of doing this via an extension number or you can use with an IVR too and have certain calls come through to your landline or mobile.

Hope that makes sense

And I think Darren Atkinson is right you can have a voip number on divert for either a) always b) fallover c) busy or d) no reply

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Have you considered using VoiP for your home phone?

Agreed - Vonage may be of interest to you.

 

[robatacs]

thanks for all your help.

We have managed with a residential line for many years as call divert to an answer phone or a mobile was always an easy option. Now we take more calls and don't want to miss any - hence a call answering service. Only now have we found out the limitation.

We have contacted ntl (3 times) who virgin (our provider) told us to contact re: a business line, but have not had a call back yet !

Will look into VoIP.

We are more than happy to have a business line put in - any recommendations on that appreciated

thanks
Lesley

 

[StevensOnln1]

Another vote for Voipfone, been using them for months and the service has been great. Much cheaper than getting a 2nd landline (more flexible and more features too).

 

[Fortis]

Good morning, I think that you will find that the divert if answered option is not available on Virgin. We have had many customers who have had a similar problems in the past. Whilst it might involve some changes, the way around this might be:

1. Subscribe to a VoIP service (something like www.voicehost.co.uk)
2. Set up and uk 01 number (about £2) per month
3. Set your home phone to permanent divert to the new number
4. Configure the VoIP to call on VoIP phone for say 20 seconds then bounce to call answering service after this time.

It will be a lot cheaper than changing to a business line, and it will mean you can keep the same number. If you need more advice regarding how this works in practice, or on a great telephone answering service drop us a pm.

Best wishes

Fortis Team

 

[Jamthesun]

We use a home line for business and use a call answering service www.ansacom.co.uk - they are brilliant. We had the same issue with divert at first. Ansacom told us that you need to be persistent with your telephony provider it can be done but an engineer has to do something in the exchange to make it work. Not all customer service people are aware of the functionality.

 

[Jet Virtual]

Hi Lesley why don't you get a virtual number that routes to the answering service? This way you solve the problem of not being able to route when you want it to and also you don't need to give out your home number.

With a Virtual Number you can set it to ring first on your home phone and then go through to the answering service.

Problem Solved!

 

[danwhiteics]

We want to use a call answering service but with our home phone the divert service is either on all the time or off.

In other words you can't have divert if "unanswered and when busy" as an option.

The problem could be because we are using a "virgin residential" land line.

Has any one any experience with this problem?

We are happy to change provider if necessary, or go to a virgin business line (which is ntl) but that is very, very slow.

Any help appreciated
thanks

Lesley

First of all I would convert to a Bus Line, if VM take a long time to do this then I would just threaten to go to one of other hundreds of providers. They will soon speed up.

Secondly once that is in place you can get a geographic divert number from a Telephone Answering Service e.g. 0115 (Nottingham) and then you are in control. You then tell VM (or whoever) when you want calls to go through to the TAS. i.e. after 10 secs, between 5PM and 9AM etc. Do not settle for a non-geographic divert number from the TAS as the divert costs are higher.

Hope this helps

As for VOIP....it has advantages and disadvantages....so far the people I have spoken to on it, the feedback has been poor.

 

[cjd]

As for VOIP....it has advantages and disadvantages....so far the people I have spoken to on it, the feedback has been poor.

Then you need to talk to some people that know what they're talking about...

 

[danwhiteics]

Then you need to talk to some people that know what they're talking about...

Nice considered response. I have spoken to people that know what they are talking about as THEY have/do use VOIP. The service they received has been poor. If you can't accept that then that's your call.

Unfortunately not all views on this forum will fall in line with your line of thinking.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Going back to the original OP's post - before this thread descends into an argument over whether VOIP is any good or not - I am surprised you don't have the option to divert when busy/engaged.

BT has a range of codes for diverting calls as follows:

• To divert all calls dial: *21*(phone number you want to divert to)#
• To divert any calls you don't manage to answer within 15 seconds dial: *61*(phone number you want to divert to)#
• To divert calls when your phone is engaged dial: *67*(phone number you want to divert to)#

It might be that Virgin simply haven't provided you with all the options.

 

[danwhiteics]

Going back to the original OP's thread - before this thread descends into an argument over whether VOIP is any good or not - I am surprised you don't have the option to divert when busy/engaged.

BT has a range of codes for diverting calls as follows:

• To divert all calls dial: *21*(phone number you want to divert to)#
• To divert any calls you don't manage to answer within 15 seconds dial: *61*(phone number you want to divert to)#
• To divert calls when your phone is engaged dial: *67*(phone number you want to divert to)#

It might be that Virgin simply haven't provided you with all the options.

All phones will have a manual divert option Ashley. I am not sure that with a residential line VM (or any other provider) will provide a divert function for certain times during the day or when busy. Hence why it is also best from a 'Business' perspective to have a business line. That way you can dictate to the provider exactly when you want calls to go where.

 

[Ashley_Price]

I am not sure that with a residential line VM (or any other provider) will provide a divert function for certain times during the day or when busy.

It seems BT do, because we have clients who we answer calls for who have a home line that is diverted to us under certain conditions and certain times of the day.

Once the person has call divert set up on their line (which is a small additional charge, approximately £2.00 a month) then they can divert calls to another number whenever they want. They simply type the relevant code (as above) into their phone.

See more HERE

 

[cjd]

I have spoken to people that know what they are talking about as THEY have/do use VOIP. The service they received has been poor.

I have spoken to people who have had a bad meal. Therefore all restaurants are poor.

I have spoken to people who say that call answering services are poor. Therefore.....

Are you familiar with the affirming the consequent fallacy? It goes like this:

All elephants have four legs
All tables have four legs
Therefore all tables are elephants.

You'll have to forgive me - or not - for being blunt, but you arrived here and your third post was used to trash an entire industry on the basis that you know some people that use VoIP and they say it's poor.

The fact - not the view or the opinion or the hearsay - is that VoIP is an excellent way of transmitting phone calls; so much so that pretty much every telephone call in the UK uses it at some point as BT's core network is now IP not circuit switched TDM.

Now it is true that some VoIP service providers are better than others because life's like that, and that for a few end users it's not a viable solution - but that's almost entirely down to either a bad implementation at their end or an bad broadband connection; neither condition is an intrinsic problem with VoIP and in no way justifies a global implication that VoIP is "poor."

Just to provide some actual evidence, these people run Call Answering services using VoIP:

http://www.voipfoneuserforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3869

Anyhoo - now that's off my chest, welcome to the forum ;-)

 

[Ashley_Price]

Can I kindly request that we stop pro/anti VOIP direction.

Danwhiteics: CJD has been a member on here since 2005, and I do trust what he's saying (even though I personally don't use VOIP). It's also not wise to come on here and immediately be negative.

Can we get back to what the OP originally asked.

You will see I am a moderator and am now watching this thread quite closely.

 

[danwhiteics]

Can I kindly request that we stop pro/anti VOIP direction.

Danwhiteics: CJD has been a member on here since 2005, and I do trust what he's saying (even though I personally don't use VOIP). It's also not wise to come on here and immediately be negative.

Can we get back to what the OP originally asked.

You will see I am a moderator and am now watching this thread quite closely.

I am not pro or anti VOIP I was giving feedback from other users. Thanks for the welcome.

 

[danwhiteics]

I have spoken to people who have had a bad meal. Therefore all restaurants are poor.

I have spoken to people who say that call answering services are poor. Therefore.....

Are you familiar with the affirming the consequent fallacy? It goes like this:

All elephants have four legs
All tables have four legs
Therefore all tables are elephants.

You'll have to forgive me - or not - for being blunt, but you arrived here and your third post was used to trash an entire industry on the basis that you know some people that use VoIP and they say it's poor.

The fact - not the view or the opinion or the hearsay - is that VoIP is an excellent way of transmitting phone calls; so much so that pretty much every telephone call in the UK uses it at some point as BT's core network is now IP not circuit switched TDM.

Now it is true that some VoIP service providers are better than others because life's like that, and that for a few end users it's not a viable solution - but that's almost entirely down to either a bad implementation at their end or an bad broadband connection; neither condition is an intrinsic problem with VoIP and in no way justifies a global implication that VoIP is "poor."

Just to provide some actual evidence, these people run Call Answering

Anyhoo - now that's off my chest, welcome to the forum ;-)

Thanks for that...and thanks for the welcome