Plenty of Australian businesses now run from a home office, and the one thing that gives it away fastest is the phone. A customer rings, the call goes to a personal mobile, the kids are in the background, and the business that looked professional on the website suddenly does not.
The good news is that a proper business phone system no longer needs a box on the wall or a second line installed. It runs on the internet, and it can be set up from home in an afternoon. Here is how to do it properly.
The problem with the personal mobile
Using your own mobile for business calls seems like the easy option, and at first it is. The trouble starts later.
The number is yours, not the business's, so when you bring someone else in they cannot share it and you cannot hand it over if you sell up. Customers save it as "John" not "the business", so the relationship sits with you personally. And there is no way to put it down – the phone rings at dinner, on weekends, on holidays, because there is nothing separating work from life.
A business phone system fixes all of that by giving the business its own number that rings wherever you want, and nowhere when you don't.
What a cloud PBX actually is
PBX stands for private branch exchange – the old grey box that used to sit in a cupboard and route calls. A cloud PBX does the same thing, but it sits in a data centre and you connect to it over the internet. No box, no lines, no engineer.
What it gives you is the features a proper business phone should have:
- A business number – local, 1300, or 1800 – that is the business's, not yours.
- A menu and extensions – "press 1 for sales, 2 for support" – so callers reach the right person.
- Voicemail to email – messages arrive as an audio file you can listen to anywhere.
- Call forwarding and simultaneous ring – the business number can ring your mobile, a colleague, or both at once.
- Opening hours – calls go to voicemail outside the hours you set, automatically.
All of it is managed from a web page. You change where calls go without touching a cable.
The softphone: your desk phone is an app
A softphone is a phone app that runs on your mobile or computer and makes and takes calls using the business number. To the customer it is indistinguishable from a desk phone – same number, same quality, same menu. To you it is just another app on the phone you already carry.
This is what makes working from home work. You answer business calls on your mobile, but they come through the business number, with the business voicemail and the business hours. Your personal number stays personal.
Keeping personal and business separate
This is the part most home-based businesses get wrong, and it is the part that matters most for looking professional.
With a softphone and cloud PBX, the separation is built in:
- Two numbers, one phone. Personal calls come in on your mobile number; business calls come in on the business number, through the app. You can see which is which before you answer.
- Different voicemail. Business callers get the business greeting and a message that lands in your email. Personal callers get your normal voicemail.
- Switch it off. Outside opening hours, business calls go straight to voicemail. The phone does not ring because it is the weekend. That is the point.
- A number you can hand on. Sell the business, bring in a partner, move house – the number stays with the business because it was never yours to begin with.
What about a home landline?
A second copper line is an option, but it is the wrong one in most cases. It ties you to one desk, you cannot forward it easily, and the NBN is winding copper down anyway. A cloud system costs about the same per month and does vastly more, from anywhere you happen to be.
Getting it set up
The setup is genuinely small: pick a number (or port your existing one), choose a plan, install the app on your phone, record a greeting, and set your opening hours. An afternoon's work, and from the customer's side it sounds like a business with a proper office.
Bold Media Group sets up cloud phone systems for Australian businesses, including home-based ones, with softphone apps, business numbers, and the menus and voicemail that make a small operation sound established. If you are running the business from home and want the phone to match, have a chat with us and we will get you set up.