Improve Call Routing with Direct Inward Dialling – Made Easy

For businesses juggling multiple employees across departments like sales, support, billing and more, inefficient call routing creates a bottleneck. This is because traditional phone systems often rely on complicated phone trees or multiple transfers before calls reach the right person. Consequently, this clunky experience frustrates customers and makes your business look unprofessional. Of course, there are other more modern ways for you to manage your calls and improve call routing: direct inward dialling or DID. As a main feature of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems and PBXs (Private Branch Exchanges), DID revolutionises how you route incoming calls.

What is a PBX and direct inward dialling?

A PBX is a business phone system that manages call distribution from external phone lines to internal users and phone extensions. More simply, this system directs incoming calls to specific staff or departments as per your desired settings and subsequently, your customer’s choice. Using the PBX alone often leads to long wait times or customers choosing incorrect departments leading them around in circles. Additionally, customers could also be accidentally disconnected, which is even worse.

DID is a telephony service where individual phone numbers are assigned to internal users or departments. In other words, you can have a telephone number for each one of your departments or staff members. These DID numbers integrate directly with your PBX. As a result, customers can dial straight through to the desired extension, department or person. Because of this, customers will no longer be shuffled around different departments or experience long and frustrating wait times.

How does DID improve call routing?

By using DID for your business communications, you’ll experience numerous advantages over traditional call routing.

Efficiency & accurate call distribution

With dedicated DID numbers for specific employees, teams or departments, calls get routed accurately on the first try. Subsequently, this eliminates wasted time from misdirected calls and missed opportunities.

Direct lines for key contacts

DID allows your most important contacts like salespeople, customer support agents, billing reps and executives to have their own direct phone numbers that clients or partners can easily access. So, no more navigating through your entire phone tree.

Polished brand image

Offering personalised phone numbers for your staff reflects attention to detail and a professional image for your business. Additionally, it shows you value your customers’ time by providing simple paths to reach the right person. And at SwitchboardFREE you have a choice of different virtual numbers, so you can give your company a local, national or even city presence.

Increased productivity

Streamlined call routing keeps your team focused without constant interruptions from call transfers and irrelevant inquiries. This means that they can better prioritise tasks and provide timely callbacks.

How to Get VoIP Phone Numbers with DID

Implementing DID is easy when you switch to a modern, cloud-based VoIP phone service such as SwitchboardFREE. And so, just like with most providers, the process is simple and straightforward.

1. Contact your provider & request a range of DID numbers based on your workforce’s size & department structure. 
2. Assign the new numbers to individual users within your PBX’s admin settings.
3. Port over any existing phone numbers as new DIDs if desired.
4. Publish your staff’s direct dial numbers on your website, business cards, email signatures & more.

With direct inward dialling integrated into your VoIP phone system, you can streamline your business communications. No more wasted time and frustration from customers or staff due to incorrect call routing – just seamless connections to the right person or department every time.

Explore how DID and other business phone system features can upgrade your call handling and cement a reputation for outstanding customer service.

To find out what DID virtual numbers SwitchboardFREE can offer your business, give the friendly UK-based team a quick call.