Small Business Owners: How do you handle your phone system?

[NewChief]

We currently have a bare bones land line in our store with an answering machine.

The thing is: my wife likes to be way more connected to her business than that, especially when she's out of town. She'd like for people to be able to dial her directly (preferably giving her the option of accepting the call or sending it to voice mail), but doesn't really want to juggle a second cell phone.

Currently we're looking at just getting an answering machine that we can actually dial into and check, but that doesn't allow her to actually take people's calls while she's not at the store.

What other options are out there? I think that Google Voice has some of the functionality we're looking for, but I'm open to cheap/elegant solutions.

[Demonpenz]

I will send over a phone representitive for an in house demonstration.

[Chief_For_Life58]

Originally Posted by threebag02

Have her hire a sweet ass little
Receptionist

it happens

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Stewie

That's interesting. I have MagicJack, but I doubt anyone would be interested in my phone calls. My LAN is encrypted using WPA. Would they have to hack that to get wireshark to work?

Yes.

WPA2 with AES encrypts the entire conversation at the network layer. They'd have to first break your wireless encryption.

Of course, then they'd have to reassemble the ENTIRE stream of packets (minus a few, there's a margin of error when it comes to VoIP packet loss) decode all of the packets, extract the voice payload, and then play it back to actually HEAR your conversation.

[oldman]

My experience with VoIP is there's a lag. It's not a big deal, but if you're using a speaker phone, you'll notice it.
Again, landline call forwarding and voicemail. Since it's within the network, you never have to worry about access. Dial the number, punch in your code, get messages. No setting up another number, no geeks needed to encrypt.

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by oldman

My experience with VoIP is there's a lag. It's not a big deal, but if you're using a speaker phone, you'll notice it.
Again, landline call forwarding and voicemail. Since it's within the network, you never have to worry about access. Dial the number, punch in your code, get messages. No setting up another number, no geeks needed to encrypt.

Yeah, I'm looking into this as the easiest method for us at this point in time. Seems like it will do everything we need and be an easy transition (a phone call to the telephone company).

[whoaskew]

We use ringcentral. Com and it is awesome

[NewChief]

And I should add:

Since the partner is moving on (I need to update that other thread in the coming weeks as that epoch comes to a close), she has a single part-time employee that will start at the new year. As such, our needs are pretty meager as far as multiple extensions and things of that nature. Basically we need a dial-in voicemail box and call forwarding at this point.

We also have to be able to send FAXs, but that's a whole other can of worms that drives me crazy. Who in the ****, in this day and age, doesn't take .pdfs/jpgs via email instead of a FAX machine? Evidently the companies my wife works with.