VirtualPBX.Com Usage Scenarios provide examples of various ways in which businesses can make use of the VirtualPBX™ to expand their business phone system, serve their customers better, and have the latest and most advanced features with no installed equipment or equipment purchases.

The VirtualPBX™ can be laid on top of or work within the phone systems of major corporations with DID or DTAA (see the explanations at the end of this usage scenario) so that the special possibilities for large companies listed below many be implemented without changing existing phone systems.

These are:

• Connect One Main Business Number to the Phone Systems (VirtualPBXs™) of Many Different Locations Through Geographic Routing (Smart800™). This Main Number Can Be a Nationally Advertised Number often a Vanity Number such as 1-800-XYZCORP, etc.; but It Will Always Reach the Branch Located in the Caller's Home Area. This Feature Can Often Save Tens of Millions of Dollars in Capital Costs.
• Reach an Employee Anywhere in the World by Simply Dialing His Usual Company Extension Either from Outside (DID) or Inside of the Company
• Single-Phone-Number 24-Hour Around-the-World Call Center Staffed by Personnel in Many Countries
• Integrate Store, Laboratory, or Engineering Personnel Who Carry Cell Phones Into the Company Phone System
• Upgrade Older Legacy PBX Phone Systems to Have the Latest Features with No Capital Costs
• Simplify Business Cards Making Easier for Customers to Reach You

One Main Business Number Can Connect to the Phone Systems (VirtualPBXs™) of Many Different Locations Through Geographic Routing (Smart800™). This Feature Can Often Save Tens of Millions of Dollars in Capital Costs.

Companies which have a large number of branch offices, retail stores, service centers, franchises, etc. can have one single 800/888/877 number which is valid for the whole country using the geographic routing capability of the VirtualPBX™ (Smart800™). This allows a company to advertise one number nationally. In many cases this is a vanity number such as 1-800-XYZCORP, 1-800-FLYHIGH, etc. which is equally valid for all branches or locations. The VirtualPBX™ can geographically route any caller to the store or office nearest him by looking at the Area Code (and perhaps the Prefix) of the caller; and then in addition, it can furnish each branch location with an individualized custom VirtualPBX™ business phone system.

This feature should not be confused with services or equipment which simply geographically route to a store or office phone number. VirtualPBX™ geographic routing can give each location a separate VirtualPBX™ with all of its advanced features but which is especially tailored to that outlet including extensions which route to its employees or to special Sales, Support, etc. queues which exactly match its particular product line or service. This routing can be done no matter where the employee is located, in the office, under way in a delivery van, at home, at a hotel on a business trip, etc. If, however, the employee wishes to be unreachable, he can mark his extension as "unavailable"; and all calls will automatically go to Voice Mail.

Using one national number with geographic routing to many VirtualPBXs™ has one very great advantage over a geographic routing service which simple sends calls to the single number of a given branch. If a decision has been made to have a full-featured business phone system (PBX) at each location, the capital costs can be enormous. For example, a chain with 500 stores would have to pay around 50 million dollars to equip each branch with a high-end PBX. Even if they elected for a less expensive (and hence less features) PBX, the capital cost would still be at least 2.5 million dollars. With the VirtualPBX™ combined with geographic routing there is no capital cost since there is no equipment to buy. There is also no maintenance and no loss of service do to a power or other failure.

Reach an Employee Anywhere in the World by Simply Dialing His Usual Company Extension Either from Outside (DID) or Inside of the Company

Many companies have a subset of their employees who must travel on business, work at a temporary location (perhaps in another country), etc. Using the VirtualDID feature of the VirtualPBX™ it possible for them to always be reachable through a single number. Usually this number is chosen to be the employee's company extension so that when he is away, a correspondent simply dials his company number either from outside or inside of the company; and for example, the phone in his hotel room in Los Angeles, or the rented cell phone in his pocket in Hong Kong, or perhaps Baikonur, Kazakstan rings.

A Single-Phone-Number 24-Hour Around-the-World Call Center Staffed by Personnel in Many Countries

Using the ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) Queues of the VirtualPBX™ it is possible to create a national or international call center served by one main phone number which stays open 24 hours around the world. ACD queues allow many employees to log in at the same time, and those employees whose extensions have been logged into the ACD queue take calls to that queue on a round robin basis.

An ACD queue can either be reached directly by dialing an 800/888/877 number; or if the main business number of a company's VirtualPBX™ is dialed, the ACD queues can be menu items offered by the Auto-Attendant. The option which allows an ACD queue to be directly reached by dialing the call-center phone number is the feature which allows the 24-hour international call center.

For example, a business with employees in many countries would have the personnel in each country log into to the call-center queue as their business day began. At the end of their day employees from other time zones would log in as the others logged out and went home for the day. This would continue around the world so that the queue was always manned, and so that a customer could always reach a specialist who could help him with his problem.

The other way to reach an ACD queue is also a feature of the VirtualPBX™ but would not normally be used for an international 24-hour call center. In this case the main number for the VirtualPBX™ of a particular office would be dialed; and for example, the customer would hear press 1 for Sales, 2 for Tech Support, 3 for Customer Support, 0 for the Operator, etc.

Integrate Store , Laboratory, or Engineering Personnel Who Carry Cell Phones Into the Company Phone System

Any phone number can be entered into a virtual extension's contact phone numbers. Thus stores, development laboratories, etc. who furnish personnel with cell phones can integrate them into their business phone system (their VirtualPBX™). When a customer calls the main number, he can dial an employee's extension directly, press the menu items for Sales, Support, etc. queues, or press zero for the operator. Cell phone rates have become so inexpensive that it is even possible for a business to have only cell phones for their business phone system, and yet sound exactly like a big company with a high-end in-house hardware PBX system.

As an example: one well known book store gives all of its employees cell phones. Thus the ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) queues can be set up for the departments which specialize in certain categories of books. Employees who specialize in or are familiar with these departments can log into the appropriate queue and take customer calls on a round robin basis.

This feature can be combined with geographic routing described above so one national phone number can serve all outlets which can in turn implement the features described in the two paragraphs above. Furthermore, this solution can offer great savings in capital costs over the approach of installing a full-featured PBX in each store.

Upgrade Older Legacy PBX Phone Systems to Have the Latest Features with No Capital Costs

Often a business will decide to that an older business phone system, PBX, or Key System is out of date, and they will wish to upgrade the older system with a modern one having all of the new features, Follow-Me Calling, Voice Mail with Automatic Call-Back, ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) Queues (i.e. Sales, Customer Support, etc.), Fax Mail, New Message Paging, VirtualDID (Direct Inward Dialing), etc.

A full-featured high-end PBX can be very expensive, 100,000 dollars or more. This leaves a company with the choice of making a large capital investment or opting for a simpler PBX with fewer features which really may not be much better than the old system.

This dilemma becomes even more acute when the expenditure must be made for a large number of branches, locations, stores, etc. In this case upgrading all of the locations can result in a capital expenditure of many tens of millions of dollars.

By choosing a VirtualPBX™ with geographic routing (Smart800™), the upgrading to a business phone system with all of the most advanced features can be done with no capital expenditure. The VirtualPBX™ can be laid directly on top of the old system provided that it has either DID (Direct Inward Dial) or DTAA (Dial Through an Auto-Attendant) so that usually no change to the existing phone system is necessary.

If, however, a company has a very old PBX system in which calls are only answered by an operator and the only way to reach an extension is for a caller to be connected by the operator, there is still a way to modernize with a VirtualPBX™ without a large capital expenditure.

The company can issue cell phones to all employees and become an all-cell-phone based business. This makes each employee reachable at all times if he wishes to be, modernizes the business, and greatly improves communication with customers and fellow employees. The price of cell phones, their quality (CDMA digital), and the rate plans have now become so good that this is a very practical and useful solution.

Furthermore, if an employee must be out of touch, take a break, etc., the VirtualPBX™ has the feature that he can mark his extension as "unavailable". In this case all calls to him automatically go to Voice Mail; but whenever a message is left, he will automatically be paged either with a standard pager or (much better) with a digital cell phone.

Simplify Business Cards Making It Easier for Customers to Reach You

A typical real estate agent's business card will have 5 or 6 phone numbers on it, his office phone, cell phone, home phone, office fax, home fax, pager, etc. This makes it somewhat confusing for his customers who must slog through this plethora of phone numbers, often leaving Voice Mail at each one while trying to reach him.

This proliferation of phone numbers is not just unique to real estate agents. Recently I was handed the business card of the COO of a major Hong-Kong company which also had five different phone numbers listed. A major satellite phone company maintains a list of the personnel at its Satellite Operations Control Center (who are on call 24X7) which has the office phone, home phone, cell phone, and pager of each employee.

Using the VirtualPBX™, all of these numbers can be replaced by the single main business number of the VirtualPBX™ plus the employee's extension. A VirtualPBX™ extension can store four contact phone numbers, two contact fax numbers, and a pager number which can be either a standard pager or a digital cell phone.

If a caller dials the main number and the extension of the desired person, the contact phone numbers are tried one after another until the correspondent answers or the call goes to Voice Mail. If a fax is sent to an extension or if the caller's fax number is in the VirtualPBX's™ VirtualDID fax routing table, the fax is sent to the extension owners Fax Mail where it is stored until he downloads it to the fax machine which is convenient. If the fax is simply sent to the main business VirtualPBX™ number, it is routed to the operator who can forward it or send the hard copy to the recipient. In the case of both Voice- and Fax-Mail, when a message arrives, the extension owner is paged that a new message is there.

The result of this structure is that a customer almost always gets right through the first time without having to play "phone tag". The only time that Voice Mail is used is when the extension owner is already on the phone or when he has marked his extension as "unavailable" to take himself temporarily out service. Since Voice Mail results in a page to the extension owner, he can call the customer back within a few minutes if he were on the phone when the first call came in or if he notices from the Voice Mail envelope information that the call is very important and requires an immediate response.

Thus it can be seen that using the VirtualPBX™, can greatly simplify a business card; yet make the extension owner is completely available if he wishes to be. This considerably simplifies the customer's task. In addition the VirtualPBX™ has two special features: Caller ID (whether blocked or not) and Call Screening. Each time that a call comes in, the phone number of that call is announced; and the extension owner can decide to answer the call or send it to Voice Mail. If the Call Screening feature has been turned on, the caller must speak his name before the call is connected; and the person being called can again answer or send the caller to Voice Mail. The Call Screening feature has been made optional because many callers do appreciate the implication of having to speak their name before the call is answered.

Finally sensitive phone numbers, home, cell phone, etc. remain secret, yet the extension owner is completely available if he wishes to be.

Explanation of Direct Inward Dial (DID) and Dial Through an Auto-Attendant (DTAA) Business Phone Systems

Most large corporations have either DID (Direct Inward Dial) or DTAA (Dial Through an Auto-Attendant) phone systems. The VirtualPBX™ is compatible with both of these systems, and has a number of special features which can greatly enhance the existing system without altering or removing it.

DID means that each extension on the desk of an employee has its own outside number which may be reached from the outside by dialing the full 7- or 11-digit phone number or which can be reached from inside the company by only dialing the last four or five digits of the full number. For this reason it is referred to as Direct Inward Dial.

Dial Through an Auto-Attendant means that extensions can only be reached by first dialing the main company number, and then by dialing the extension when the company Auto-Attendant answers. The VirtualPBX™ has two special characters "wait-for-answer", #2, and "one-second pause", *2, which make it possible for the VirtualPBX™ to automatically dial an extension through an Auto-Attendant.