What is call forwarding and how does it benefit your business?

If you recently upgraded your business phone system, or are considering changing up your communications technology, you’ve likely noticed that call forwarding is an available feature. Knowing what call forwarding is and how it can benefit your business can be a huge game-changer in the way your business operates, from improving customer communications, to employee work-life balance and even overall productivity.

We’ve broken down exactly what call forwarding is and what benefits this nifty piece of technology offers to your business and staff.

What is call forwarding?

Call forwarding is a feature found in many cloud phone systems and business telephone systems these days. Call forwarding allows you to do as the name suggests – forward calls! With this feature, call forwarding allows you to forward on or redirect incoming calls to a more appropriate number. Call forwarding is often used to redirect calls from landline to mobile, from office to personal, or to a covering colleague or department.

When would you use call forwarding?

You can use call forwarding in lots of different situations to ensure there’s never any dip in communication or confusion from customers. Call forwarding could be set up for:

• Holiday cover or any period of leave – calls can be forwarded to your covering colleagues or within the wider business.
• During travel time – if you’re flying or travelling long distance with limited opportunity to check your phone, have your calls forwarded so customers aren’t left waiting with urgent queries. Equally, if you’re abroad and have a mobile or international number, you can forward calls to the best number for you.
• Remote working – have your office landline calls forwarded to your work mobile phone or similar so service is uninterrupted.
• Out of hours service – if you only work to a certain time, but the business is available for alternative hours outside of this, call forwarding allows you to switch off from work without affecting customers.
• During busy periods – if your line is busy or you’ve set your status to busy because you’re otherwise unavailable, call forwarding allows you to work without interruption or building up a backlog of calls.

What are the benefits of call forwarding?

Call forwarding itself as a feature isn’t that new of a technology. What is new is the ways in which you can use call forwarding to streamline business telephone systems both internally and externally.

For employees who are frequently in meetings, travelling, or otherwise unavailable, call forwarding means that rather than returning to multiple missed calls or voicemails to respond to, calls are sent on to someone who is available to help. Callers aren’t left frustrated trying to get hold of someone and the employee who is unavailable doesn’t have to spend lots of time catching up on missed calls.

Cloud telephone systems have several features that promote improved work/life balance for employees, call forwarding being one of them. By setting up call forwarding when not working (such as evenings and weekends), employees can relax knowing any urgent queries will be handled by the out of hours team, creating a clear division between home and work life – something which is even more important for remote or hybrid workers.

With a hybrid workforce, call forwarding can be invaluable for helping employees and customers stay in contact with no disruption in service. Having calls forwarded from landline to mobile or vice versa means that no matter where staff are working from, customers can reach them on the most appropriate line.

Making call forwarding part of your business comms

Call forwarding is designed to help keep your streams of communication flowing without interruption. Customers are calling for a reason, and they ideally want resolution where possible. Call forwarding means that if staff are unavailable for any reason, calls still get diverted to someone who can help. This results in improved customer experience, better business productivity and more leads captured – all thanks to a simple piece of cloud telephony.

Find out more about how to set up your business telephone system with call forwarding features and more from the experts at Enreach – speak to our team today.