How do I configure my Hosted VoIP solution? Call Flow Configuration.

From Bandipedia

The most common mistake made by service providers in selling Hosted VoIP solutions to Small-to-Medium businesses (SMB) is thinking a voice solution is simply provided by selling a VoIP seat license for each employee. This is a consumer based mindset that will give the SMB customer dial tone for each employee but not provide a solution for your business. This happens everyday to many SMB customers who in turn have their business significantly disabled due to the VoIP provider not understanding business class service.

When a customer dials your business number, you are normally expecting them to be presented with some options. You may want the caller to be sent to the operator, receptionist or a group of employees for a live answer. If there isn’t anyone available, you may want the caller to be presented a list of options for them to choose from. Some SMB’s want different groups like sales, customer service or tech support to work in teams and be presented callers in various ways. This series of events is referred to as a “Call Flow”.

The design and implementation of a call flow is imperative to giving you a voice solution that enables your business rather than disable it. When moving to a Hosted VoIP solution, you are expecting PBX type features to run your company. This means replicating features you may have taken for granted in your current phone system.

Today’s business class VoIP service providers have the capabilities to offer all of the feature sets required by SMB customers. Consumer services like Vonage are not for SMB. They do not offer the basic business class features listed below:

Auto-Attendant (AA): This is an automated list of features offered a caller to route their call.

Bridge Line Appearance (BLA): This is a feature that allows multiple users phones to ring when a call is offered. This enables a SMB customer to assign several employees to be available to answer customer calls live.

Hunt Group: This is a defined list of users. A call is routed to this group one person at a time until a user is found available. This allows you to predetermine who should have call priority in an order you set. Thus, your top sales reps could get the call first.

Automated Call Distribution: This is a defined list of users. Calls are evenly distributed based on the user that has been waiting without a call the longest. Users must log in and out of the call group.

This is only a small list of features but should be offered with any legitimate business class VoIP provider. However, this must be defined in a call flow discussion. Your provider must consult with you to identify all of the features needed or they will not be provisioned.

A call flow is merely a diagram of where you want callers to route if a call is unanswered. This should cover from when the call enters the system to hitting a voice mail box. You can even define how long it looks for a particular extension or group before rerouting. Here is an example of a call flow:

In summary, purchasing seats with key features is not enough to designing you Hosted VoIP solution. A call flow design is one of many things that need to be completed to have a successful implementation. This in hand with a Network Assessment can make the transition from a traditional telecom solution to VoIP a smooth process for the SMB customer.

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