SMB Phone Service Recommendations

searcher profile

April 11, 2022

by a searcher from University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business in Bend, OR, USA

Hi everyone,

Does anyone recommend a simple SMB phone service?

Our current phone infrastructure is a landline and our General Manager's cell phone. His cell phone is a single point of failure in our business, so we are looking for a way that our office manager can text employees/customers from that one phone number via a desktop dashboard, even if our General Manager is out. Is there a way to do that without getting an overly complicated service?

Thanks for the help!

2
5
108
Replies
5
commentor profile
Reply by a professional
from University of California, San Diego in Los Angeles, CA, USA
We love Google Voice when it's direct lines to people (owner phone for administration/vendor accounts), but it doesn't really work well for shared queues (eg, when you want your office manager to cover the general manager), unless you disconnect it from forwarding to his cell phone and manage it solely via the web UI (and also schedule coverage so you know who's managing it, and when).

Used Ooma Office (https://office.ooma.com/) in one of my businesses, and one of the highlights was that we could easily set up a virtual receptionist that provided a menu. You could pre-record messages for each menu option, so that you can easily provide answers to commonly asked questions and screen the phone call altogether, or route phone calls to different people based on rules you set for business hours, etc.

There's an option to enable SMS messaging on the desktop app too, though we had to request it directly with support to get it activated.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Cornell University in Santa Barbara, CA, USA
James I'd recommend some type of IP phone (Google voice, RingCentral, etc.). Most will let you port existing numbers over to their service, letting you keep that point of contact, and you will be able to make calls directly from desk phones and use some type of app or browser connection to make calls/send texts from computers and cell phones that are logged in to that phone number.

Google voice is a super easy add on if you are on g-suite for email etc. and has worked well for us in one of our businesses.
commentor profile
+3 more replies.
Join the discussion