Tips for integrating mobile phones and business telephone systems

These days many of us have a mobile number, a main business number, maybe a direct dial business number, email on our desktop PCs/smart phones/and other mobile devices, voice mail on our business phone, and voice mail on our mobile phone.  It can be overwhelming for both us and those trying to reach us.

A few ideas to simplify and increase productivity:

Have a direct business number to your business desk phone?  Consider canceling your wireless business phone voice mail and using your wireless providers forward no answer service to send calls to your DID number after a certain amount of rings.  Some one calls your cell phone while you are at your desk, let it ring to your desk phone for a clearer connection. Some one calls your cell, you don't answer, call goes to your desktop voice mail.  All your business voice mail, both mobile and desk phone are in one voice mail box.

Voice mail to e-mail.  Check to see if your telephone system can push your voice mail messages out to email in the form of a wav. file.  This allows you to listen to your voice mail from either your desktop or smart phone email in-box. Want to take the message integration further, explore the many wav. to text conversion softwares available.

Twinning.  Check to see if your telephone system offers twinning, the ability to ring your desk phone and cell phones simultaneously when your extension or direct dial number is dialed.  This gives you the ability to only give out your business number, but still receive business calls on your cell when you choose to.  Would you like to be able to call business contacts with your cell, but make the call look like it came from your office number?  This one is nice, keeps your cell phone caller ID from being captured!  This may be available on telephone systems with more advanced twinning features.

Over the top VoIP with your smart phone. Have a hosted or premise IP telephone system that can run SIP IP phones?  Then you may be able to install a SIP IP APP on your smart phone or tablet and turn your device into an extension of your IP phone system.  Remember this may save mobile voice minutes, but it does use your wireless bandwidth, best considered with an unlimited data plan.

I hope this was helpful, thanks for reading!

Richard Hill has worked in the telecommunications field for over 20 years, 15 of those as the President and owner of SafeCall, a Charlotte, NC based company offering business telephone systems, VoIP telephone service, carrier consulting, and voice/data cabling.