There once was a time when having a phone presence in another location was a very costly endeavor.  Recently, with the advent of cheap DID (direct inward dialing) numbers, it is easy and affordable to have a phone presence in multiple locations around the globe.  This can be advantageous for businesses with clients all over the world, or businesses trying to acquire new clients globally. With the very cheap cost of ownership, DID numbers can also be useful for friends and family to keep in touch.  This works by simply purchasing a DID that would be local to your friends/family and forwarding that number to yourself.

For businesses, DID numbers can be even more beneficial due to providers including more and more forwarding options.  VOIPITS INC, for example, now includes a free virtual hosted phone system (also known as a PBX) which can support full phone system features at no additional cost.  Traditionally many of these features required an expensive in house phone system.  Now it is free and simple to have the following advantages at your business's disposal:

This feature allows you to present a message to your callers and give them multiple options to direct the call.  This typically allows direct dialing to employees, or calling to specific departments (i.e Sales, Customer Service, Technical Support).  Also, multi-level voice menus can be setup where a certain menu selection can then lead your caller to another menu for very specific routing purposes.  A great benefit of the voice menu is you can give callers common information such as your business address, website, fax number automatically without needing a receptionist to provide this information.

Time based routing can allow you to direct callers differently based on the time of day.  This can be useful if you want to direct callers directly to a “We are closed” announcement and straight to voicemail after hours. Businesses with multiple locations all over the world could also direct calls to locations that are open to ensure calls can always be answered.

This allows all phones on your system to call each other free of charge.  Because virtual phone systems are based on the Internet, the location of the actual phones does not affect your ability to call other phone system users for free.

Host a conference room for internal employees or outside callers, or both! This allows many people to get together to have a group discussion.

No one likes listening to lengthy voice menus just to simply check voicemails.  With voicemail to email you conveniently get all voicemails delivered straight to your inbox with details such as time of call, caller display information, and the actual message itself attached.

All of these features and more are free and included with the virtual phone system that VOIPITS INC offers.  Sign up for a free account and configure the system to see all of the different benefits when coupling the virtual phone system with virtual phone numbers!

This blog was contributed to My VoIP Provider by Aaron Shames, CEO and founder of VOIPITS.