Since teams are increasingly opting to work remotely, businesses are quickly switching to get a virtual phone number to keep their businesses running. For example, many customer service teams are now working from home instead of from one central location. In order to keep processing calls, a virtual phone service (aka VoIP phone) is used to send business calls to each employee’s computer or phone.
With a virtual phone system, you get all the features of traditional landlines at a much more affordable cost, and without the need for additional equipment. How great is that?
In this post, we’ll go over how virtual phone systems work, how to set up a virtual phone system, and why your business benefits from virtual numbers.
Get a virtual phone number in minutes
You can get a virtual phone number with OpenPhone in three simple steps:
- Sign up for an account with OpenPhone — when you sign up, you can try out OpenPhone free for seven days.
- During signup, select your city or area code in the US or Canada to pick your phone number or pick a North American toll-free number.
- Verify your account with an existing phone number and a credit card.
That’s it! You now have a virtual phone number. If you run into any issues during the signup process, fill out this form to reach our support team.
9 powerful benefits of getting a virtual phone number
Virtual phone numbers deliver many benefits to businesses using them. Cheaper costs, ease of use, and innovative features help businesses using virtual phone numbers scale. These benefits include:
1. No additional hardware
Virtual phones use your existing mobile devices and computers. To access your phone service, all you need to do is have an internet connection along with an app for mobile devices or a web/desktop app for computers.
Some virtual phone providers have additional hardware you can buy, but these are often proprietary and more of an upsell for the provider.
2. More affordable than landlines
Unless you’re a large corporation with hundreds of employees and offices around the world, a landline phone system is going to be prohibitively expensive. With many small businesses and startups embracing working from home, virtual phone service can help you save money while giving you the features you need to manage your business.
Smaller businesses can save as much as 45% each month over traditional phone services.
3. Shared phone numbers
This is a useful feature for customer support and inbound sales teams. Everyone on your team can call and text from the same number. This allows you to centralize communication through one number and helps prevent miscommunication with your customers and internal teams. Anyone with shared access on the team can answer incoming calls and messages.
4. Integrations with your apps
Virtual phone services have the benefit of integrating with apps like Slack, email, and CRMs. Integrations help businesses save time, money, and reduce manual work.
For example, by integrating your phone service with your apps, you can automatically log calls and get transcribed recordings sent to you.
5. Set your business hours
You can use a virtual phone service to set the hours for each phone number. Virtual numbers assigned to individuals can have business hours from 8 am – 5 pm, but a customer support number could have 24/7 availability. By using business hours, you can prevent calls from coming in and disturbing you in the middle of the night.
6. Get virtual local and toll-free phone numbers
With a virtual phone system, you can get local numbers in any area code. For example, if your business operates out of San Francisco, but has many clients in New York, you can get a local area code in San Francisco (415) as well as a 917 phone number. This will help you establish a local presence in any market you serve.
If you’re making cold calls, you’ll have a much higher success rate if your prospect sees a local number on caller ID when you call.
You can also get toll-free or vanity numbers. With toll-free numbers, callers from across the United States or Canada will be able to reach out without paying long-distance fees.
Vanity numbers are great if you’re looking for a memorable number for your clients to remember. For example, 1-800-FLOWERS.
Getting a local or toll-free number is simple. Sign up for an OpenPhone free trial and select a number. Once you try out OpenPhone, you can always also port over any existing US or Canadian number or North American toll-free number.
7. Scales to fit your growing business needs
You’ll need more phone numbers as your business grows. Your sales team to contact their prospects. Customer support agents have to work through a unified phone number to take support calls as they come in. Managing all these numbers through a virtual phone system is a pretty easy process.
Need to add more users? Just go into your settings and add new users as needed. It’s that easy to scale as your business grows.
8. Admin and security features
Virtual phone numbers should be easy to manage. You’ll want powerful analytics that shows the number of calls being made, who isn’t using their phone numbers, call times, and more. You also need audit logs that show where calls are being made and for general record-keeping purposes.
9. Support for your business
Your virtual phone system provider needs to offer support options including email, text, and phone support so they can help you when issues arrive. You’d be surprised how many virtual phone system providers don’t offer customer support. Some companies even go the extra mile and give you a dedicated account manager who can help you set up your account and provide best practices for managing your phone system.
6 key features you should expect when getting a virtual phone number
There are many virtual phone number services available today. Free services like Google Voice and paid options like OpenPhone help businesses get the phone services they needed. When researching virtual phone services, make sure they have the following six features:
1. Support for IVR and individual extensions
Depending on the size of your business, you’ll likely need an auto-attendant for call routing. While you could list multiple phone numbers on your website, an auto-attendant can make your life easier. This way, you can share a single, main phone number, that can be dialed to reach any employee in your organization.
Your employees will be able to have their own business phone numbers that can be accessed via an extension.
2. Texting (SMS and MMS)
Many businesses use SMS as a customer communication channel. While it hasn’t replaced email and phone calls as the go-to support channel, it is worth noting the small increases in SMS support every year. With a virtual phone number, you can text your customers and clients to support them however they need it.
Text messaging can also be used internally if your employees need to communicate.
3. Voicemail to text
Many people don’t have time to check their voicemails. With virtual phone services, you can have your voicemails automatically transcribed and sent to you via text, email, or through Slack.
4. Individual and shared business phone numbers
As mentioned earlier, shared phone numbers are great for customer support teams. You can also use shared phone numbers if an employee is unavailable and someone else needs to reply on their behalf.
Each employee will also need their individual business number too. With a virtual phone system, you can set specific numbers to be private or shared depending on the use case.
5. Call recording
Call recording is a useful feature because some calls need to be recorded phone calls. With a virtual phone number, you can record customer calls, sales calls, and more with just one click. Some phone systems even allow for recording all calls automatically. The benefits of call recording include:
- Training sales reps or customer support agents
- Recording customer discovery calls to improve your products, apps, or services
- Keeping records of client meetings to give updates and address any concerns if there’s miscommunication
Call recording is important for the overall health of your business because you can use the recordings to find out what’s working and what can be improved. Make sure you’re legally recording phone calls!
6. iOS, Android, and web apps
Virtual phone numbers can work on mobile devices, web browsers, and be installed on your computer. For mobile users, iOS and Android apps are much easier to use than mobile browsers, so make sure your virtual phone service has iOS and Android apps. For your users on desktops and computers, a browser-based app will serve their needs.
OpenPhone has all these features and more.
OpenPhone: The virtual phone service for modern businesses
Thousands of businesses rely on OpenPhone’s virtual phone service. With OpenPhone, you can make unlimited calls throughout the world to help support your customers, team members, and clients. OpenPhone is available on your mobile phone (iOS and Android apps) and your computer (web and desktop apps).
OpenPhone has many required features for business phone systems including:
- Local and toll-free numbers
- Number porting
- Custom greetings (for voicemail and phone menu)
- Automatic call recording
- Call forwarding
- Works in the United States and internationally
- Crystal-clear audio quality
- Can set business hours
- Multiple phone numbers tied to one account
Get started with a free trial of OpenPhone today.
Virtual phone number FAQs
Businesses like to use Google Voice as a free virtual phone service, but it has limitations. Some of the limitations include zero customer support, no toll-free numbers, not being available in Canada, and not being able to set business hours. Google Voice is meant more for personal use.
There are Google Voice alternatives that give you all the features you need.
Yes! Most virtual phone number providers let you port your existing number into their platform. Some providers charge a porting fee to bring your number over. However, you can move any existing US, Canadian, or North American phone number to OpenPhone for free.
You can have virtual phone numbers through most tablets, smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers. As long as you have an internet connection, you should be able to use a virtual phone number.
You don’t need to buy extra hardware upfront such as VoIP-enabled desk phones to get a virtual phone number.
Yes, but whether this is possible depends on the virtual phone service you use. For example, OpenPhone allows you to create an address book of your business contacts to help keep everything neatly organized.
Yes. Plenty of services offer US virtual telephone numbers that you can get online. You can get local phone numbers for any city and state in the US on top of your existing personal number. It works via a mobile app on your cell phone and/or your computer (OpenPhone is available on both). You’ll be able to use your Internet connection for calls and text messages.
Most virtual phone system services provide a free trial that gives you access to their platform so you can test out if the system is right for you.
Traditional phone numbers are provided by landline and cell phone carriers. Usually, you can only select a phone number based on the area where you’re based.
With virtual phone numbers, you can get a phone number based on any area code that you prefer from anywhere as long as your provider supports the region. Virtual phone numbers can also be easily accessed from anywhere you have WiFi.
Co-Founder at OpenPhone. Ukrainian-Canadian in SF. Love exploring new hiking trails.
