Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single voice mail box for both your local and toll free callers? Rather than having multiple voice mail accounts to monitor and manage, forwarding both sets of callers to a single voice mail box means you’ll only need to check and manage just one.
Meanwhile, callers from various regions could easily reach you using either a local or toll free number.
Here’s how to get a voice mail account that includes a toll-free number and a local number.
Take Advantage of Virtual Call Forwarding Numbers to Create Your Own Unified Voice Mail Box
Virtual call forwarding numbers are an affordable, flexible solution for managing incoming calls from callers across the country (or even around the world). You can get local, regional, and toll free virtual numbers that ring to the phone number of your choice. This designated phone number can be changed on demand, further adding to the flexibility of this solution.
In order to create a single voice mail box that accepts both local and toll free calls, you will need the following:
- A toll free virtual phone number. Not only do toll free numbers reassure callers that they won’t incur costs when calling, they also help your business to look more professional and established.
- A local virtual phone number. At the same time, having a local presence in a given community is also desirable. With virtual phone numbers, you can order a local number for a city you’re not even in and use call forwarding to receive those phone calls remotely. From the caller’s perspective (and cost), it’s just like making a local call — even if the call rings to a phone a thousand or more miles away.
- A phone number you will designate to receive calls from the above. Whether using a toll free or local virtual phone number, or both as we’re doing in this example, you’ll need a destination phone to receive those phone calls. This could be your main office line, your home office phone, a cell phone, a secondary office line, etc.
Depending on your virtual phone number service provider, you should be able to send all of your account’s associated virtual numbers to a single “catch all” voice mail box. If so, you’d be able to check both the local and toll free phone numbers’ messages via a single interface such as through an online account dashboard, automated phone menu system, or alternately, as an attachment sent to your email address.
In addition, you have several options as far as setting up your voice mail for your toll free and local call forwarding numbers.
- Option 1: Using Time of Day Routing to Send Calls to Voice Mail at Certain Times of Day – For example, you could set both call forwarding numbers up to use time of day routing to send calls to the designated number during business hours and to voice mail at night.
- Option 2: Forwarding Calls to Voice Mail After a Certain Number of Rings – With this option, calls would be routed to voice mail if they go unanswered after the prescribed number of rings.
- Option 3: Forwarding Calls Directly to Voice Mail – Depending on your needs, it might make sense to pre-screen all of your calls. Sending calls directly to voice mail allows you to do just that.
Getting both a local and a toll free virtual call forwarding number and directing voice mails to a shared interface is convenient for you and your callers. Set up is simple, and once options such as time of day routing are complete, your calls will be forwarded automatically.
