One number. Different people behind it.
Your phone rings, and something has to decide who picks up. So the first question is who sits behind that number, and what has to be true for each of them when a call arrives. Four answers below, each one a team you name and give rules to.
The second question is how many of you there are, because it changes which parts you use rather than how much of them you get. All 28 kinds of step are there at every price. What changes with size is how many teams you need, how many calls you can take at once, and whether anybody is watching the reports on a Monday morning.
How teams and waiting workThe teams as the product names them. Who is in one follows from what each person can handle, not from a list somebody keeps by hand.
Built around who picks up.
A clinic has a front desk and somebody who sends the bills. A shop has the person at the counter and the person who orders. A trade has an office that quotes while the crews are out fixing things. An agency has three people who each handle something different. None of them has a sales department, so the four shapes below are named for the person rather than the department. The product calls each one a team: a team you name and give rules to, behind the one number you already publish. None of them needs a second phone number, and none of them needs a second product.
The people who quote
A call from somebody ready to buy jumps the line.
When everyone who quotes is genuinely busy, the caller can press 1 to be called back instead of hearing more music: they hang up and get rung back, rather than deciding how long they are prepared to wait.
The people who fix it
A question only some of you can answer only rings those people.
Say what each person can handle, and a call that needs one of those things is never offered to somebody who cannot help. Each team also has a limit on how long a caller waits, and when it runs out you decide what happens next: another team, a voicemail, or a message that says what to do instead.
The person who chases invoices
Their own hours, their own recording rule, on the same number as everyone else.
Your hours are part of the menu rather than fixed to the number, so the person who does the invoices can close at four while the people who fix things stay on until six, and each one says something different once it is closed. Recording is a company setting: always, the person’s choice, or never, plus whether the person answering may stop one that is running. Playing a recording back is a separate permission from making one.
The front desk
One menu, a short number for everybody, and a handover where you introduce the caller.
Dial a colleague’s short number and it costs nothing and never lands on your minutes. Handing a caller over means you check with the colleague first, introduce the caller, then step out, or keep all three of you on. It behaves the same way every time because hold, the handover and a three-way call are the same thing underneath.
And how many of you there are.
How many of you there are decides which parts you use and which plan they arrive on. Prices are per seat, per month, in US dollars, and each plan carries a seat limit rather than a seat minimum: the smallest number you can buy is one.
1 to 10 people
Everybody answers everything.
One number, one team, and a menu short enough that nobody resents it. There is nothing to route between yet, so the work is your hours, your voicemail and what a caller hears at seven in the evening.
Starter, $29 per seat per month. Up to 5 seats.
10 to 50 people
Teams that answer different things.
The point where a second team appears, and with it which calls go first, who can handle what, and a different set of hours per team. It is also where recording starts to matter, which is why it is on from this plan up.
Pro, $49 per seat per month. Up to 25 seats.
50 and up
A floor, and the numbers to feed it.
Enough people answering at once that how many calls you can take at once, and how many numbers you hold, both matter, and enough calls that service level, answer rate and an hourly heatmap are how you staff the week rather than how you report on it afterwards.
Business, $79 per seat per month. Up to 100 seats.
How it works underneath
A team is a named queue. Priority is a number on the queue, and a higher one is offered to whoever is free before anything else waiting. Every skill named on the queue has to be on the person for a call from it to reach them at all, which is what turns a skill from a label into routing. The queue also carries a maximum wait, and when it runs out the flow takes its overflow branch.
Opening hours are checked inside the call flow rather than on the number: a business-hours block reads one named schedule, which is how two teams on one number keep different hours.
An extension is three to six digits, unique inside your company, and dialling one never touches the phone network, so it is never metered.
The prices and seat limits on this page are read from the same file that bills you, and a build fails when the two disagree.
Questions people ask
Is this right for a clinic, a trade or an agency?
The trade matters less than the shape. If you publish one number, a few people answer it between other work, and the calls are not all the same kind, this is built for that: a clinic keeping appointments apart from billing, a trade whose office answers while the crews are out, an agency where one number reaches three people who each handle something different. Where it fits badly is the other shape, a room of people whose whole day is answering the phone.
How many people does it suit?
Two to about fifty answering the phone, and the answer changes across that range. Under ten, the work is your hours, your voicemail and what somebody hears at seven in the evening, because there is nothing yet to route between. Over ten, a second team appears and with it which calls go first and who can handle what. Past fifty it still runs, and the questions become how many calls you can take at once and how many numbers you hold.
What if we are only two?
Then most of this page is not your problem yet, and that is fine. Two people share one number, one team and a menu short enough that nobody resents it, and the parts that earn their keep on the first day are your opening hours, your voicemail and the caller who rings on a holiday. There is no minimum number of seats: the smallest number you can buy is one.
Do we need someone technical?
No, and there is nobody to hire for it. Setup is done with you rather than handed over as a login, so the first version of your menu, your hours and your teams is built in a conversation. After that, changing an opening hour or what a caller hears is a screen you open rather than a ticket you file with whoever installed your last system. The part that takes judgement is deciding what a caller should hear, which is your call and not a technical one.
What if we grow?
Nothing is rebuilt and nothing moves to a second product. All 28 kinds of step are there at every price, so growing means another team, more people or another number rather than a different system. What changes is the plan those seats sit on, and how many calls you can take at once.
A phone system, not a contact centre.
The difference is not company size and it is not vocabulary. A contact centre is organised around a workforce: people whose whole day is the queue, and a plan for how many of them are on it at four in the afternoon. A phone system is organised around the number, for the case where one line is answered by more than one team and the person answering has other work the rest of the day.
Being the second kind does not mean a thinner queue. Skills-based routing, service level reporting and the queues themselves are in the base product here, on every plan. Most of this category puts them in a second product with its own price and its own seat minimum, where the floor is three seats and in places fifty. There is no floor here at all.
What is genuinely not here is the workforce half: nothing forecasts how many people you will need at four on a Thursday, nothing builds the shift plan that follows from it, and nothing scores a call afterwards. If those are what you are shopping for, this is the wrong product and we will say so on the first call.