Case: how to organize the work of a company with several offices

The virtual PBX RingCloud continues to publish cases about how telephony can help in organizing business processes for different areas of activity.

Earlier we talked about how telephony can help owners of online stores.
Now I am the owner of an online store (Part 1)
Now I am the owner of an online store (Part 2)
Now I am the owner of an online store (Part 3)
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How to turn a freelancer into a serious company with the help of telephony
We teach freelancers to lie

And how to organize the work of remote employees
Case: We organize the work of employees remotely

Today, we would like to talk about how telephony can organize the work of several offices. What are the advantages of the company and how to simplify the life of the client in this case.

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What arises in the head of a regular user when he hears the words "firm", "company"? Visually, a table, chair, telephone, computer, or several such workplaces in a room, or maybe even several offices or floors in a building. But there may be another option. The head office is in one building, and the sales department or warehouse is in another. Nothing if we are talking about buildings, but what about cities? And for those who need to associate several different points distant from each other to ensure harmonious work, we wrote this case.

Who has more than one office in the same building?

• Firstly, companies that develop a regional network usually have their headquarters in the regional center and representative offices in cities of regional significance.
• Secondly, companies may have additional units - not full-fledged offices, but employees in the field. This may be an employee in a warehouse where the company removes a platform for the basing of goods, at customs, etc.
• Thirdly, there is an office, and there may still be a production or workshop, where there are also employees of the company.

We will tell you how to combine them all with the least cost and using convenient solutions.

To start the company need to choose a number . You can take "beautiful", which is easily remembered, or one whose last numbers rhyme with an advertising slogan. One number will be enough to organize an arbitrarily extensive network.



Each employee must be available during the day to control and resolve issues. Some field workers need to be available not only to management, but also to customers who call the office from the outside, for example, to contact the delivery department that is in stock and specify the deadlines.
Therefore, in addition to the number you need to organize telephony for the work of the department. To do this, the data of all employees is recorded in a virtual PBX. Each employee will have his own short number, which will simplify the work of the departments. You will not need to dial a city or mobile number to contact an employee. Simply dial the short number of the employee himself.



To set up a single telephony with one “beautiful” number between all these offices and employees, previously, it would take a lot of manpower and resources, expensive equipment, as well as a complicated implementation process. To service such a network would have to hire an employee in the state or a third-party organization. Now everything is much simpler, as there is Internet and cloud technology. The Internet is available everywhere, and cloud technologies allow you to send workflows and loads on software and remote equipment.

So your customer is calling. He does not need to know that one of your offices in Moscow, and the other, for example, in St. Petersburg; he needs to get in touch with your company, and not figure out exactly where to call him. It's not so scary if you have a single 8-800 number, but what to do if your sales market is in Moscow and the warehouse with goods is in St. Petersburg? And the client wants to know about the availability of goods directly by calling the warehouse. How much will he be confused by the St. Petersburg warehouse number? The situation becomes more complicated in the case when you have 2 or more warehouses, and you only sell goods in Moscow. In this case, the employee who first accepted such a call will either have to figure out exactly where the product is located, or the customer will have to call several warehouses to get the information he needs. Of course, you can remove information about the stock from the site, do not post the St. Petersburg number on the site. But how good is this approach? The buyer wants to either resolve the issue, or get information, and if you do it for him right here and now, without wasting his time on “call back to another number”, etc., he will be endlessly grateful to you. This is how loyalty is earned.
For the company, a small life hack will help: you unite employees into groups depending on their functions, and not geography. For example, you may have a small warehouse in Moscow and a main warehouse in Novosibirsk; it is more convenient to combine employees for the warehouse into one group, because the main thing is to find out if there is a necessary product at all, and only then to orient by delivery dates.

You will reasonably ask, why not use mobile numbers? Because a landline number allows you to add your company +30 to respectability, +20 to reliability and +15 to trust among customers, and roaming costs for a client can “bite”.

The next step to a convenient communication, not only for you, but also for the client, will be a voice greeting, which says: “Hello! You called the company "Horns and hoofs." To contact the sales department, press 1; in order to find out about the availability of goods - 2, to learn about the time and status of delivery - 3 ".



If the call came to the Moscow sales office, but the client also wants to know about the availability of goods in the warehouse, which is located in St. Petersburg, and such information can be provided only in St. Petersburg, then there is no need to say “Call us back to the number 8-812 - *** - ** - ** ”, but simply transfer the call to the internal number of a competent employee in St. Petersburg.

Different time zones

It happens that the company operates throughout the country in different regions. And this means that at the time when one office starts to work, the other is already finishing, and in the third already going to bed. On the one hand, it is inconvenient. But if you look differently, you can organize a 24-hour call-center by assigning operators in different regions at different times. Moreover, the entire history of each subscriber’s appeals to the company is available to everyone.

The possibility of the operator during a call to transfer a call to another employee who is in any other place plays an important role. Because it is ridiculous to ask the caller to call again, because he will have to listen to the voice menu again and wait for an answer. In addition, there is a risk that the employee “walked away” by just five minutes, but the missed call and waste of time on a repeated call will leave an unpleasant aftertaste at the client.



Each office can specify in the virtual telephony system working hours, after which the call will immediately go directly to the mobile number of the employee who is responsible for incoming calls during non-working hours.

So, we tried to describe some mechanisms of the virtual PBX functioning on the example of a company that has several offices. Technologies are becoming more perfect, cloud services are more convenient, more practical. They do not require a large amount or power of equipment, do not need maintenance personnel with all the ensuing consequences. They are more flexible and mobile, they are easy to adjust to the desired tasks. But will all the “mammoths” of telephony soon go down in history with their equipment and technology? An interesting question ...