One of the distinguishing features of telephone numbers in IP telephony from numbers of mobile operators is multi-channel.
What is it and how can it be applied?
The number of channels or otherwise the number of simultaneous connections is the ability to talk to several people using the same number. In other words, if you have 3 employees in your sales department, then they can simultaneously pick up the handsets and make a call from the same number (of course, if the number is 3 or more channels).
There can be any quantity of communication channels on a number, so how many do you need?
First of all, of course, we proceed from the number of employees who need telephone communications.
Next, you need to take into account the business process in your company, what do you have to do using telephony – make calls or receive, or both?
Only if your company is engaged in calling customers and does not receive calls at all, you need the number of channels on the number equal to the number of managers. For example, there are 5 employees in the department, so you need 1 number with 5 channels.
In all other cases, it is desirable to have more communication channels than the number of employees.
To calculate channels quantity on number, you need to consider how many incoming calls can be from your customers at the same time. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough employees to answer all incoming calls, because telephony is just designed to help when there are “not enough hands” and you can set up an automatic answer or put the client in a waiting queue.
The main thing is that, technically, each client who decides to dial your number has a free communication channel, then your employees will simply be able to call back when they are free.
If you do not have data on how many simultaneous calls can be to your phone number on a normal business day or at the time when the number is in advertising, then you can use our statistics.
According to our statistics, companies that actively answer customer calls and make independent calls need to connect 20-30% more communication channels than employees. For example, if there are 10 employees, then at least 12 channels are needed.
Even if you have 3 employees and a small volume of calls, then you need at least 1 more free communication channel if all employees talk, and one of the clients decides to clarify something, he will not be able to get through, he will hear short beeps and all the advantages of IP telephony will be useless – the client’s call will be lost.
So, in order not to lose customer calls, you definitely need to add more channels to the number than employees, especially since the cost of a communication channel is quite low.
If you have a brand new business and are in growth mode, don’t worry our system for determining the lack of channels will help you with this, which will inform you when you do not have enough channels on your number and you can easily and quickly order an increase in the channel from our specialist even in the middle of the workflow.
