How to create a digital receptionist
Give your business a professional edge with a digital receptionist to handle incoming calls, in association with 3CX Phone System
There are dozens of reasons why businesses of every size should employ a digital receptionist: to provide an easier way to triage calls, rather than relying on a human; to save time for incoming callers; and to save time for your staff, particularly the poor soul who has to handle all incoming calls.
This comes with a huge caveat: your digital receptionist must be set up with thought and care. It should allow you to deal with simple queries immediately – not only saving the caller time, but your employees too. Done correctly, a digital receptionist will give your business a professional sheen without irritating the caller.
In this article, we’ll explain how to set up a digital receptionist using 3CX’s latest Phone System – which can be deployed for free, both on your own equipment and in the cloud – and provide tips so you can avoid making common mistakes.
Key features
So what exactly can a digital receptionist do for your business? The most obvious thing is to efficiently direct calls to the right person.
Imagine you’re a caller who knows exactly who they want to speak to. If they know the extension number, they can enter those digits and be put straight through. Or you can give the option of “Connect to an extension”, which will then list all the available extensions.
In many companies, it’s more likely that you’ll want to offer options to speak to sales, support, marketing and so on. Once you set these up as call groups within the easy-to-use 3CX Management Console (the Groups page is on the left-hand side), you can assign them as an option for the Digital Receptionist ( see “How to set up a 3CX Digital
Receptionist” opposite). So, saying “Press 4 for sales” will put them straight through to your eager sales team.
Often, the simplest way to deal with a call – for both the caller and the business being called – is to simply add them to the queue. You might choose for to put them straight through to a (human!) receptionist or the sales department. Again, this is a simple option during the setup process.
Naturally, there are times when callers simply want to listen to the options again or decide they want to speak to a human. Convention has pressing “0” to go straight to reception, while it makes sense to add an option to listen to the choices again.
Advanced features
Those key features will cover 80% of your calls, if not more. However, every business is different and 3CX anticipates the need for more options by making one of the options “Connect to Digital Receptionist”.
This isn’t some maddening MC Escher-like loop. It gives you the option to create a new recorded menu of options, perhaps for people who need to hear the choices in a different language. You could have a German, French or Spanish language set of instructions – the only limitations are the ten keys (0 to 9) that people can press.
It can also be useful to create a group voicemail for a team, and allow the caller to leave a message for them. Say a customer calls with a problem when the office is closed. Rather than simply asking them to call again, you can have the option of leaving a message for the support team to be picked up the following day.
Another handy feature is to let callers enter someone’s name and then be connected straight through. 3CX prompts the caller to enter the first three characters of that person’s surname using the keys on their phone – so “Andrews” would be 263 – at which point they will be put straight through to the right person, or given a choice of users that match those digits.
Out of hours
What happens if a caller phones up when the office is closed? Not a problem. Head down to the Settings option at the bottom left of the Management Console. You will see a block called “Timezone, Office Hours & Holidays”. This tool allows you to set up opening hours for every day of the week, along with multiple break times.
If your office is always going to be closed over certain dates – 1 January, for example – then you can upload a
custom message (“We’re sorry, but the office is closed for New Year. Press 1 if you wish to leave a voicemail with the receptionist, or 2 if you wish to be redirected to a particular extension.”). It’s a brilliantly flexible system.
What’s next for you?
Hopefully this guide has given you some idea of what the 3CX Digital Receptionist can do for your business. But the 3CX Phone System’s skills don’t end there: you can also set up automatic provisioning of phones and hotdesking, as well as record calls for training purposes. Download 3CX for free from 3cx.com or call on 020 3883 9120.