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Why am I charged more to talk live with my caller?

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This is one of the most common questions we're asked. Most of the time, it's because people are not familar with the way our advanced virtual office system route calls to different destinations. The purpose of this page is help you understand this process.
 

Forwarding Calls vs. Connecting Calls

Our system doesn't "forward" calls, it connects the call to you. What is the difference? Typically, forwarding means that the incoming call is basically passed through our system and transferred directly to you, regardless of whether you are available or not. This is functional, but lacks the ability to offer some of more advanced features that one would expect with a professional PBX system.

For example, say your extension is setup to forward to your home office first, then your cell phone. When a caller dials your toll-free number, then dials your extension, they are put on-hold with music while our system dials your home office. This is a big advantage to normal call forwarding in which the caller typically hears silence or a series of clicks and tones while the call is being transferred. Having the caller on-hold with music portrays a more professional image to the caller and lets our system connect to you without the caller even knowing what is happening.

If our system doesn't get an answer at your home office, it will then try the next number on your call forwarding list, which in this case is your cell phone. You answer your cell phone and instead of being connected directly with the caller, we let you know that you have a call from your toll-free number and then prompt you to either accept the call, keep the caller on-hold, forward the call to the next number in your sequence, send the caller to voicemail, disconnect the caller, re-identify the caller or transfer the caller to another phone number. By giving you these options before you even are connected to the caller allows you manage your calls, wherever you are, without having to use any special phone equipment.

If you choose to accept the call, we connect you directly with the caller. From this point forward, the call is consider "live", until you hang up with the caller.

What makes a live call slightly more expensive than our regular call is that our system is actually handling two separate calls at the same time. One call is your caller and the other is our system calling you, then connecting the two. By doing it this way, you can take advantage of our professional features like being able to put your caller on-hold with music or transfer the caller to another extension without having to have a special phone or other equipment. These types of options would not be available to you if we simply forwarded the call to you.

Our toll-free virtual office system makes advanced call routing features seemless to the caller and cost-effective for you to integrate since it works with your existing phone system. You can literally save thousands of dollars by not having to purchase or lease an expensive PBX system and still manage your calls from multiple locations.

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