With everyone working from home these days, it’s tempting to give out the cell phone number for the sake of convenience for you and your clients. You’re working longer hours since you’re working from home. So is your client. And now, they have your cell number. This is a recipe for a disastrous work-life balance.
We’ve been dealing with the 3CX phone system for a few years now, and continue to be impressed by both its simplicity and versatility. One of our customers that’s currently running 3CX called us to get help with employees who were moving to a work-at-home setup until further notice, and asked us if we could help them set up call forwarding to the employees’ cell phones. We outright said no.
Instead, we were able to leverage the 3CX phone system mobile app for Android and iOS, and send a provisioning e-mail to each user. They download the mobile app, open the attachment in the e-mail, and their cell phone is connected as if it were a desk phone. It’s that simple, and they get all the normal features of being at their desk phone: voice mail, call presence status for their co-workers, call parking, music-on-hold, transfer, conferencing, you name it.
Since the pandemic appears to be going on a bit longer than originally anticipated, we’re starting to roll out more permanent work-at-home kits for each of the users, as well. Basically, it’s an IP desk phone just like the one at the office, a headset, a power adapter, and a long Ethernet cable to run to their router. It’s a simple kit, and it works so well.
While residential networks tend to be a bit of a Pandora’s Box of issues due to a wide variation in configurations and hardware, we’re up to the challenge and have seen early success. We’re looking forward to rolling this out for more customers.
If this is something of interest to you, let us know! We’d be happy to help you get set up.