Phone systems by industry
The phone problem is not the same in every business, even though the system underneath usually is. What changes is who is meant to answer, when the calls arrive, how sensitive the conversation is, and whether anybody is sitting at a desk to take it.
These pages set out the phone problem each trade runs into, and what is usually worth changing first. They are written for the person deciding rather than for a search engine, so they say when something is not worth doing as readily as when it is.
Medical practices
Reception call flows, after hours routing and dependable lines for patient calls.
Pharmacies
Scripts, suppliers and customers on the line all day. Queues and routing that keep up.
Hospitality and pubs
Bookings ring the right phone, whether that is the bar, the bistro or the office.
Trades
Take the office number with you. Calls follow you from the workshop to the ute.
Veterinary clinics
Tell an emergency from a booking in the first few seconds, day or night.
Law firms
Client calls kept confidential, and cover for the days somebody is in court.
Accounting practices
Direct lines, voicemail to email and clean transfers between staff.
Real estate agencies
Split sales from property management, and keep the number on the listing answered.
What actually differs between one trade and the next
Nearly all of it comes down to four questions, and the answers are what make the pages different from each other.
- Who is meant to answer, and are they free? A receptionist is doing two jobs at once. On a building site nobody is free at all
- When do the calls arrive? Real estate peaks on a Saturday, an accounting practice peaks for a season, and a vet clinic gets the one call that cannot wait at two in the morning
- How sensitive is what gets said? A medical practice and a law firm start every call with something that should not be repeated. A pub takes a booking
- Is anybody at a desk? That single question decides whether you are buying desk phones, cordless handsets, or an app on the mobiles people already carry
Answer those four for your own business and most of the decisions after them follow. The pages below do it trade by trade.
If your industry is not here
It probably still applies. The four questions above do not care what is written on your door, and the fix is usually the same shape once you have answered them.
If you would rather start from what a system actually does, the business VoIP systems page is the plain version, and the hosted PBX page covers whether it should live in your building or ours.
Talk to us about yours
Tell us what the business does, how many people need a phone, and what goes wrong with the ones you have now. We will tell you what would change and what would not.
Call 1300 865 879, or send us the details and we will come back to you.