If you want people to stop calling your personal cell phone number and have the ability to channel all your business calls, I have a solution for you:
We use a system called RingCentral. This system gives us a main office number that works virtually. I put this number on pretty much all of our materials; if someone wants to contact our team, that’s the number they’ll call.
When people call the number, RingCentral forwards it to my COO’s computer or an app on her phone. If the call is for me, my COO can transfer it to me. We can also code it to see if we’ve missed a call, and it has a feature that can transcribe your voicemails and send them to you via email. There are plenty of customization options for your business needs.
The great thing about this is that when you get a phone call through RingCentral, you know it is a business call. That means we don’t have to give out our everyday cell phone numbers to our clients.
We have a couple of numbers through RingCentral that go straight to voicemail; we give these out to appraisers, for example, so we can get back to them later. Another number is our sign-call number, which we put on all of our yard signs. Since we hate to miss sign calls, we’ve coded the system to let us know when people are calling through that number.
“The RingCentral system helps limit the number of unknown calls coming through to your cell phone.”
If, for some reason, I do miss a sign call, RingCentral will email, text, and send me a voicemail. Further still, I have an automated response saved in my phone so that if I do miss a sign call, I can send a message to the caller: “I see I’ve missed a call from you. Are you interested in seeing a property? Kati Spaniak, eXp Realty.”
I also have a direct RingCentral number, which I put on all the advertisements that I do for listings, buyers, or anything where I want the caller to be able to get through to me right away. RingCentral also has a caller-ID feature that will tell me who is calling most of the time.
This direct number is also posted on our MLS, and if a call comes through, it could be from an agent. I can either take the call, transfer it, or send it to voicemail and send a text response.
As far as my personal cell phone number, I only give it out to agents with whom I’m working on a deal, as well as buyers and sellers. When I do get calls on that number, I’ll usually ask how they got my number; it could be that they were referred by a past client.
Ultimately, the RingCentral system helps limit the number of unknown calls coming through to your cell phone, giving your business structure and focus.
If you have any questions about how RingCentral works or how to implement it in your own business, feel free to reach out and give me a call.
