Business phone systems for small offices

I set up your office phone service:

• A phone number. A new business number, or the one you have now, moved over if it can be.
• A line for each person. Everyone who takes calls gets their own.
• Desk phones, if you want them. I sell them and set them up, quoted separately.
• A call flow. Which phones ring, the menu callers hear, and where calls go after hours.

I register each office's address for 911 calls as part of setup.

When something needs changing or isn't working, you call me. My own business line, the number at the bottom of this page, runs on the same service.

Usually. Most US numbers can move. I check whether yours can before I quote, and if it can, I do the porting paperwork. There's no charge to move it.

Moving a number is called porting. Your current carrier releases it, and the date depends on the carriers, not on me. Until the switch date, calls keep going to your current service.

So don't cancel your current service before the move is done. Canceling first can mean losing the number.

The port request usually needs the name and service address on your current account, the account number, and a PIN if the carrier uses one. A recent bill usually has most of it.

The way your business answers the phone now, or the way you wish it did. You tell me how it should go, and I set it up:

• An auto-attendant. A greeting with a menu: “Press 1 for scheduling, press 2 for billing.”
• Ring groups. Several phones ring at once, so whoever is free can pick up.
• After-hours rules. Outside business hours, calls take a different path, such as straight to voicemail.
• Voicemail. For the calls nobody picks up.

If your callers almost always want the same person, a menu only gets in their way, and I'll say so. A ring group and voicemail may be all you need.

If you already have desk phones, tell me the make and model, and I'll check whether they can be used. If they can't, or you have none, I sell desk phones and set them up, quoted separately.

Each new phone is set up to fetch its settings from the service when it's plugged in, which is called provisioning. I still set up each one and test it before hand-off.

Each desk phone plugs into the network with a cable and gets its power one of two ways: from a PoE switch, which powers it through that same cable, or from its own power adapter at the desk. A new outlet for an adapter is electrical work, so it goes to a licensed electrician.

If a desk has no network jack, it needs a cable run, which is priced as network cabling.

You can buy the phones yourself from a parts list I provide, or I supply them at cost plus a small markup, with a 50% deposit on the equipment and the rest due on completion.

More about network cabling

Calls run over your internet connection and through your office network, so both matter. The connection has to be working, and the network has to be set up for voice.

Before setup, I check your network: the internet connection, the router, and the switches the phones will plug into. Some routers, including some that internet providers supply, have settings that can get in the way of calls. I look for those, too.

If the network needs work first, I tell you what, and quote it before doing it. In an office whose network grew a piece at a time, that can mean a small-office network job.

More about small-office networks

The desk phones stop working until it's back. They make and take calls over the internet, so without it they can't.

That is one reason some businesses add a backup internet line. With failover set up, it can keep the phones working when the main line goes down. A call in progress may drop when the gateway switches over.

A power outage can take the phones and the network equipment offline, too. A UPS sized for them can keep them running for a while, if the internet connection stays up.

How internet failover works