All,
I'm looking for some brainstorming for our office's main incoming phone calls. Our receptionist is the primary person that answers our main incoming office line, but we're not large enough that she can stay at her desk all the time. That is, she makes copies, etc, such that she isn't always at her desk when the main line rings. Our company has a philosophy of personal touch, so the use of an "auto-attendant" (I think that's what it's called) is out of the question. What we've done to address this currently is to have multiple phones throughout the office all ring when the main line rings. Obviously these are located in places where she's most likely to be (by copiers, etc). But having 8 phones ringing for every inbound call can be a little disruptive for those that are near those phones. Lastly, there are a series of folks that share responsibility for answering the main line when the receptionist is either not available (off, on break, etc) or just swamped with calls.
There. Now that I've described the situation, does anyone have any thoughts, comments, ideas on what we might be able to do? Here are a couple of MY ideas, but I don't know if they're realistic or not.
- Some form of "pager" that would vibrate or whatever on incoming calls (for use when she walks away from her desk)?
- I'm sure there are headsets that would enable her to know remotely that there's a call, but can she then use a PHONE that's near where-ever she happens to be to HANDLE the call?
The other factor is that when she's NOT available, we'd need a way for those that are backing her up to be aware of calls and somehow know when to help. Note that this might involve a separate solution (IM, etc).
Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Please only offer ideas that you would consider yourself and are practical. Thanks! Mark