Your business phone number is your lifeline. It’s how potential customers make contact with you and how your business survives and thrives.
So if you’re considering moving your business phone system to the ‘cloud’ but are concerned about losing your current phone number when you do, that’s understandable.
But there’s no need to worry. When you move to a new cloud phone system you’ll be given the option to keep your existing phone numbers and will then be able to take them with you when you move.
Why moving your traditional phone line can be a problem
If your business is moving to new premises, there are naturally a multitude of things to consider and remember.
Often one of the most neglected – but probably one of the most important – is your business phone number.
Hopefully your clients will all be familiar with it (it’ll be splashed all over your sales and marketing materials), and for most organisations it’s one of the primary forms of communication between your staff and your clients and customers.
But for some businesses moving away from their home turf, it’s just not possible to transfer their existing business number and traditional phone system if their new location is in a different BT exchange area.
All of the lines on the traditional old Public Switched Telephone Network are connected to the BT exchange, whether you use BT as a provider or not.
If you move but remain in the same exchange area as your current number, it can be quite simple to keep it. But if you move into another exchange area, then it becomes much more problematic.
Head to the cloud
You can now easily migrate your current business phone number to the cloud instead of sticking with the limitations of a traditional phone line.
Plus once your number has been ‘ported’ (moved over) to your new cloud provider, it’s then incredibly simple to take with you if you ever decide to move again.
Coupled with the business benefits of keeping your existing number, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems have many advantages compared to their legacy counterparts.
They’ll save you money, offer great scalability and reliability and give you total freedom of location.
Once it’s set up, you and your team can be based anywhere that has a good internet connection. Just plug in your handset and go.
Will there be any disruption?
When your business phone number is ported to a new cloud-based provider, the process is usually similar for most clients and systems.
On the morning of the scheduled changeover your current phone number will stop ringing, usually at some point between 9am and 11am.
Over the next two hours your phone system will gradually come back into service – it may be intermittent for a while but by the early afternoon the porting process should be complete. Occasionally it can take a little longer, but unfortunately your telecom provider has no control over the time it takes as the process is carried automatically by the network providers.
There will be a period of a few hours when your business has no working numbers so before the scheduled day, it’s advisable to inform your team and customers that your phone system will be out of action for a short while.
But this short-term disruption will lead to long-term benefits and savings for your business.
If you would like to learn more about moving your business phone number to the cloud, Time Communications would be happy to talk you through the options available to you. Contact Time Communications’ expert team on 0113 2059640, you can request a callback on our home page, email at [email protected] or message us here.