Forward Business Calls When the Office Is Closed

The easiest way to forward business calls when the office is closed is to have them ring your team's cell phones through the Telonium app, with a short greeting that explains what is going on. You can set it all up from home in a few minutes.

Last Friday, January 10, a winter storm brought snow, sleet and freezing rain to Atlanta. The day before, Governor Kemp declared a statewide state of emergency. Schools closed, flights were canceled, and many of us stayed off the icy roads through the weekend. For a lot of small businesses, that meant a day or two with nobody in the office. The same plan works for ice, power outages and any other day the office closes unexpectedly.

How Do You Forward Business Calls When the Office Is Closed?

With a cloud phone system, your business number lives online, not in the building. When nobody can get to the office, calls can still ring the people working from home. There are two easy ways to do it:

• Use the app. The Telonium app runs on Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, over home internet or your phone's cell signal (4G or 5G). Sign in, and your line rings wherever you are. Calls you make show your business number, not your personal cell.
• Forward to an outside number. If someone does not have the app, forward their line to their cell phone.

What Should Snow-Day Call Handling Look Like?

On a normal day, your main number might ring the front desk. On a snow day, the front desk is at home. A few changes help:

• Ring a call group. Put the people working from home in a call group, which rings them all at once so whoever is free answers.
• Update your greeting. Upload a short recorded message explaining that the office is closed for weather but you are still answering calls or returning messages.
• Send urgent calls somewhere. Add an option like "If this is urgent, press 1" that rings the owner or an on-call person.

What Should a Weather-Closure Greeting Say?

"Thanks for calling. Because of today's weather, our office is closed, but our team is working from home. Please stay on the line and we will connect you, or leave a message and we will call you back today."

If you are fully closed, say so, and give a time when you will return calls. People are patient with weather. They are less patient with silence. Our holiday voicemail greeting tips work just as well for weather days.

How Do You Switch the Phones Over from Home?

Use your number's holiday hours, even though it is not a holiday. Add a closure named "Weather," pick today (or today and tomorrow), choose all day, and send calls to your weather greeting or a call group. On those dates your regular schedule steps aside, and it comes back by itself when the closure ends, so nobody has to remember to undo it.

Also set a backup number for your account. If the system cannot reach your phones, calls go to that number, such as the owner's cell, instead of failing.

How Do Messages and Faxes Reach You at Home?

Voicemail to email means every message arrives in your inbox with the recording attached. Nobody has to dial into a box from home or wait until they are back at the office.

Faxes can work the same way. With virtual fax, faxes arrive as PDFs by email, so a snow day does not mean a stack of paper waiting on the machine.

Telonium also sends your street address and suite or floor to 911 with the call. If your team works from home for a few days, ask each person to set their home address as their location in the app.

How Do You Test Your Plan Before the Next Storm?

The worst time to install an app is the morning you need it. Pick a quiet afternoon this month and run a short drill:

• Everyone installs the Telonium app and signs in.
• Each person makes one call and receives one call.
• You record a weather greeting and save it.
• You confirm who is in the snow-day call group.
• Someone practices adding a one-day closure to the holiday hours.
• Voicemail emails go to an inbox someone checks.
• Anyone working remotely has set their 911 location.

For storms of the bigger kind, our hurricane preparedness plan for business phones goes a step further.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Customers See My Personal Cell Number?

Not if you call from the Telonium app. Outgoing calls show your business number.

Do I Have to Forward Every Person's Line?

No. Often it is enough to send the main number to a call group of the people working that day.

Can I Set Up the Closure Before the Storm Arrives?

Yes. Add the dates to your number's holiday hours the night before, and the closure switches on and off by itself.

If you would like help setting up a weather-day plan, call our team at 404-566-8888. Support is available Monday through Friday, 9 to 6 Eastern, with emergency support around the clock.