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Breitloh

The phone number on your contact page

A phone system is not the interesting part of anybody's week until it goes wrong, at which point it is the only part. I am not a telecoms reseller and I will not pretend otherwise. What I take on is the setup, the number, and the join between your phone and your website, which is where calls are usually lost.

Book a callWebsite support and maintenance
One number routed to the right person, with the website dialling it and out of hours handled

Where it usually hurts

Calls arrive nowhere in particular
One number rings one handset, or six phones ring at once and whoever is nearest answers with the wrong greeting. Nobody knows how many calls were missed, because a missed call leaves no trace worth reading.
The number is tied to a building
A landline that only works at a desk in an office half the team has stopped visiting. Every mobile handed out to get round it becomes another number nobody outside the business knows.
The website and the phone are strangers
The number in the header is not the number on the invoice, calls from the website cannot be told apart from any other call, and the callback form goes to an inbox rather than to whoever is on the phones.

What the job covers

  • A straight recommendation on a cloud phone provider, with what it costs, and no commission taken from anyone
  • Number porting planned so the old line stays live until the new one is answering
  • Call routing written down: who rings first, what happens after hours, and where voicemail lands
  • The website wired to it, so tapping the number on a phone dials, and callback requests reach whoever is on duty
  • Calls from the website distinguishable from the rest, so you can tell what the site is producing

What it has to talk to

Your phone provider
The mainstream cloud providers all do the same job competently. I will set one up and hand it over in your account, in your name, rather than resell it to you with a margin on top.
Your website and forms
Click to call on every phone, a callback request that reaches a person rather than a mailbox, and opening hours that come from one place so they cannot disagree with your Google listing.
Whatever records the enquiry
If calls should end up in a CRM or a shared mailbox alongside form enquiries, that join is worth building. An enquiry that only exists in somebody's call history is an enquiry nobody can follow up.

A worked approach, not a client

How I would join a phone system to a website

  1. 01

    Work out where calls should land

    Not the technology, the rules. Who answers first, what happens at one o'clock, what a caller hears at seven in the evening, and who is responsible for the voicemail. Most systems are configured before anyone agrees this, which is why they annoy people.

  2. 02

    Port carefully, in that order

    The new system runs alongside the old line first, with the number ported once the routing is proven. Porting is the one step that cannot be undone quickly, so it goes last rather than first.

  3. 03

    Wire the site to it

    One phone number held in one place, used in the header, the footer, the contact page, and the structured data a search engine reads. Change it once and it changes everywhere, including on Google.

Questions I get asked about this

The ones that come up on almost every first call. If yours is not here, ask it and you will get a straight answer.

Do you sell phone systems?

No, and I would be wary of a web developer who did. I will recommend one, set it up in your account, and take no commission for it. What I charge for is the setup and the join to the website, which is the part telecoms companies leave to somebody else.

Can we keep our existing number?

Almost always. Porting a UK geographic number to a cloud provider is routine, takes a couple of weeks, and is planned so the old line keeps ringing until the new one is proven. The one to check early is a number tied to a service you no longer pay for.

What does a cloud phone system cost?

Typically a few pounds per user per month, paid to the provider, in your name. That is usually less than a single traditional line, and it removes the reason people hand out mobile numbers, which quietly costs you more.

Can we have different numbers for different campaigns?

Yes, and it is the cheapest analytics you will ever buy. A separate number on the website makes calls from the site countable without any tracking script, which also keeps you well clear of the consent questions that come with the alternative.

Does the phone number on the site affect our local SEO?

Consistency does. The same number, in the same format, on your website, your Google Business Profile, and your directory listings is one of the signals used to decide you are a real business at a real address. A number that disagrees across those places is worth fixing before anything clever.

Can enquiries from calls and the website end up in one place?

That is usually the point of doing this at all. Both can land in a shared mailbox or a CRM, so an enquiry is not lost because it happened to arrive as a call. If yours should also end up beside documents and history, that is closer to a client portal.

What happens to calls out of hours?

Whatever you decide, written down in advance: voicemail to email, a message with your actual opening hours, or an out of hours mobile. The failure mode I see most is an unanswered ring at seven in the evening, which tells the caller nothing and loses the enquiry.

Is this worth doing at the same time as a new website?

Often, because both come down to the same question of what happens when somebody wants to reach you. If you are already moving your email, doing the phones alongside it means one round of updating your details everywhere instead of two.

Related

Tell me what you have now

Half an hour on a call, and a straight answer about whether this is the right job and whether I am the right person for it.

Book a callhello@breitloh.com