Vonage Virtual Receptionist

A virtual receptionist also known as an auto attendant provides the functions a telephone receptionist provided just a few years.

In your Vonage Business system if you configure the virtual receptionist to receive all incoming calls, the inbound caller is greeted and given options to reach the department or a person by pressing one digit for a department or multiple digits for a person’s extension.

Vonage Business communications for small business

In many small businesses staff members perform a myriad of functions and do not require the virtual receptionist. During business hours any available staff member picks up the phone and attends to the caller, transfers the caller to the extension of the appropriate staff member or takes a message.

In this scenario incoming calls are received by a call group aka hunt group. When a call comes in it rings on two or more phones and an available staff member picks up the phone. However, there is a limitation, the Call group does not have different behavior and outgoing message for unanswered calls during business hours and after hours. Only the Virtual receptionist is aware of business and after hours and can have different behavior and OGM for each.

There is a work around that works for small businesses.

Configure the Vonage virtual receptionist with business hours and after hour schedules and individual outgoing messages.
Set all incoming calls to the virtual receptionist to go directly to voicemail.
Configure the call group to send unanswered calls to the virtual receptionist’s extension.

Inbound caller experience:

Incoming calls to the main number are routed to the call group, after the number of rings specified in the call group are routed to the Vonage Virtual Receptionist which immediately plays the appropriate OGM , depending on the time of day and sends the call to Voice mail. During business hours the OGM plays “all agents are busy…” , after hours it plays “ we are now closed …”

Our years of experience allows us to leverage the many features of Vonage Business Communications to suit our clients in New York , Queens , Brooklyn and Nassau County.