Whether in the office or at home call forwarding can be an important part of your internal and external business communications.

Using VoIP feature call forwarding, offsite team members, sales people and executives can easily get calls wherever they may be and keep customer service levels high.

What is call forwarding?

Call forwarding allows you to connect an incoming call to another telephone number. Your phone calls can be directed to your office, home, mobile device, or another employee to take the call.

This feature is crucial when running a business especially when your primary way of communicating with your customers is through the phone. Call forwarding will be especially useful for companies who have international offices.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, call forwarding has proven to be very useful for all employees who are working remotely to communicate with staff and customers.

Types of Call Forwarding

Unconditional forwarding

Unconditional forwarding a simple form of call forwarding. Calls will be forwarded immediately regardless of other factors. The majority of virtual phone numbers are set up this way. Local and national telephone numbers all resort to the same single endpoint number which proves to be beneficial for many businesses.

Call Cascading

Call cascading is more complicated than unconditional forwarding. It allows your phone call to be directed to multiple phone numbers in an ordered sequence.

The recipient will order the sequence and the call will go down this order until one of the respondent's answers. This is beneficial for many businesses because it maximises the efficiency of companies and allows certain employees to answer phone calls more often than others, making for a more effective team.

Hunt groups

Hunt groups distribute calls to a variety of different phone lines until the call is answered. The most common type of hunt group is idle hunting. This occurs when the call goes to the responder with the least amount of call activity.

Hunt groups help ensure that one employee isn’t outworked over another. This is important to keep track of especially in larger companies where they have busy call centres.

Circular hunting

Circular hunting is a form of hunt group that distributes calls in a circle. Add the call through the list, if no one answers the call it will go back to the top of the list in a cycle.

Benefits of call forwarding for small businesses

Increase staff availability

When away from the office and the phone, missed calls can occur. Fortunately, with Call forwarding calls can be sent to an employee's mobile phone or home phone so that the client can get the help they need in real-time. This is more convenient for the customer and it allows your staff members to maintain availability even when they aren't physically sitting at their desks.

Encourages remote working

For most industries, all work cannot be done at the office. For example, estate agents or construction workers are regularly on the go meeting potential clients, the same goes for many other fields of work. Call forwarding marries good customer service and mobility. Employees are free to travel where they need to go and their important calls can follow.

Better customer service

Moving on from the last point, incorporating a call forwarding system can better customer service as a whole. If an employee is on lunch or away from their desk the call can easily be forwarded to the next available caller.   This can be easily customised beforehand allowing the customer to get through and avoiding long wait times. 

Expand your company's presence

Furthermore, call forwarding doesn't just have to be from your main office number to an employee's cell phone. This feature can also be used for increasing your perceived presence and make things more convenient for your customers.

If your business has one office but does business regionally multiple local numbers can be set up to be forwarded to your main line. Creating one hub for all your communications and ensuring that your business doesn't miss a call.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, call forwarding is an essential tool for small businesses. Allowing for calls to be seamlessly answered while on the go to ensure every call reaches your business. Even when away from the office allowing for full business continuity and remote working capabilities. This tool which is quick and easy to set-up is particularly useful for dealing with customer and sales enquires. 

For more information on how a VoIP solution can fit into your small business communications get in touch with our experts on