Call forwarding is an extraordinarily useful feature in the telephone system that enables an incoming call to be redirected to another telephone or mobile phone where the called party is available. The biggest benefit of call forwarding feature - particularly for business enterprises - is that no valuable customer call will be missed and the calling party will also not be disappointed.
The only alternative to call forwarding feature is having an answering machine or voicemail. But the undeniable fact is most callers resent listening to an impersonal recorded message. Again, there are also callers who are hesitant to leave a recorded message as they are keener to directly converse with the called party.
Many business owners who believe that human contact is essential to develop customer rapport prefer the call forwarding feature over the answering machines. There are also businessmen who favor their calls getting forwarded to a call center, so that the customer can reach and talk to an operator instead of an answering machine or voice mail.
There are also advanced call forward features that are flexible - whereby you can choose to forward your calls to different phone numbers or to your voice mail depending on the time of the day for all seven days of the week.
Of course, to enjoy call forwarding facility, you will have to assume responsibility for activating, reactivating and deactivating call forwarding feature before and after business hours.
If you activate the voice mail, you can direct the incoming calls to your voice mail if there is no response or you can choose to straightaway send all your calls directly to your voice mail. You can also choose to forward all your voice mails to an e-mail account in the form of a voice file. In multi-national companies, international forwarding service has become quite common and the calls can be forwarded to any international destination.
When availing the call forward feature, you must be mindful of the costs involved. Please know that the phone line that is forwarded is treated as an outgoing call for billing purposes. This means long distance charges will apply if the number the calls are forwarded to is a long distance number. As per norms, call forwarding features use the *72/*73 code. However, if you are agreeable to pay additional charges, the service provider company will allow remote call forwarding - which can be controlled from any phone.
This service is without doubt a useful telephone feature that enables you to receive and answer telephone calls from different locations. Once you have this facility, all incoming calls will be received by the telephone operator of a centralized answering services and you will receive only the calls meant for you or your department.
Today availing call forward facility is quite easy and you can obtain the facility from any service provider companies. All you have to do is to choose the numbers to receive the forwarded calls. However, if you plan to get the service, you should be careful in selecting a reputed and reliable service provider with a sound track record.
Regardless where your business is located, you can now obtain a unique USA or global phone number and use this number on your business cards and inform your international clients. There are provider companies that will allow these clients to reach you at any phone number in the world by calling this unique USA or global phone number.
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