Thinking about moving your phone system to the cloud? In many cases, you won’t have a choice come August 2022, when telecom services providers will forever retire plain old telephone service (POTS) lines, per the FCC, and their customers will have to find another type of service. There’s never been a better time to move to the cloud and leverage the myriad advantages it offers businesses of any size. And there’s no better system to deploy than Vodia.

The evolution of your phone system from a legacy system to a cloud PBX gives you an incredible array of features, some of which aren’t available with a legacy system, as well as the possibility of reducing telephony costs by up to 80 percent. Overall, cloud phone systems make sure your team can collaborate no matter where its individual members are working while providing your customers with a seamless and easy-to-navigate call journey. Let’s talk about what you’ll need to move to the cloud.

Extension Numbering

When installing your new cloud phone system, the first order of business is a numbering plan to assign an extension number to each end user. Vodia supports numbering from two digits (20, 21, 22…) to five digits (20000, 20001, 20022…). Extension assignments are the purview of the administrator, but SMBs often prefer two- or three-digit plans, while larger enterprises, particularly those with offices in more than one country, usually select four-or five-digit plans to provide extensions to all users within the organization. Vodia has “system extensions” set by default; these can’t be included in a range of user extensions:

• 700– Conference Bridge
• 777– PIN protect IVR
• 888– Fax FXS/ATA
• 999– Voicemail

The Vodia phone system also includes “virtual extensions” for call queues, digital receptionists and ring groups. These can be clustered in a single range, such as 800 to 899, so you can hold 800 to 820 for call queues, 821 to 840 for digital receptionists and 841 to 860 for ring groups.

IVR – Digital Reception

IVR, also known as digital receptionist/auto attendant, can create a multi-layer system for callers to connect with a desired department/extension. Your company’s culture will dictate if calls are immediately answered by a representative or agent or routed through digital reception. Either way, every level within your system must have an extension number, so you’ll need to consider this when putting together your numbering plan.

Ring/Hunt Groups – Call Queues

Hunt groups are used to distribute inbound calls to agents and are typically used for simple, low-call-volume groups. The PBX calls the agents in stages, making it possible to escalate calls to more and more extensions; if the call doesn't get picked up, it will ultimately be sent to a programmable destination – this can be an internal resource, like a mailbox, or another group or an external number.

Call queues, however, give even the smallest of SMBs the opportunity to give callers an enterprise-level call experience. Call queues give you:

• Different polling strategies
• Specific music on hold and intro prompts
• Queue position announcements
• Callbacks
• Agent wrap-up time
• SLA timers and reports
• Queue-specific queue recording

Vodia gives you numerous insights into your queue which you can use to make decisions pertaining to how callers experience your organization, how long they wait to speak with an agent, how long they speak with an agent, etc.

The Most Feature-Rich Cloud Phone System, Period

Since our company’s inception, we have empowered and supported numerous businesses worldwide, both small and large, by providing these organizations with our best-in-class cloud and on-premises IP PBX technology. The Vodia phone system comprises the most complete suite of robust business telephony features for on-premises and cloud-based telephony, including auto attendant, SMS, paging, separation of personal and work calls, conference calls, call recording, CRM integration and Microsoft Teams integration. You can find a comprehensive list of features here.

Our award-winning software turns any mobile phone, laptop, tablet or PC into a VoIP client employees can use for their everyday communication needs, from anywhere, anytime. Our proprietary, built-from-the-ground-up PBX offers true cloud multi-tenancy, integrations with MS Teams, FreshBooks, Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce, SMS, a desktop softphone app and Android and IOS mobile apps. If you’re looking for a feature-rich, rock-solid solution for your organization, Vodia makes it possible to work from anywhere and keep your team seamlessly connected and collaborating, today and tomorrow. We’d be delighted to put you in touch with one of our outstanding resellers. Contact us, sales@vodia.com.