Phase 1 \u2014 An X-ray of what you have today<\/h2>\n
Before you start looking at providers, you need four pieces of data. Without them, any quote you receive will be a blind estimate:<\/p>\n
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- Simultaneous calls at your peak hour.<\/strong> Not the daily total: the peak. That’s what sizes the service.<\/li>\n
- Ownership of your numbers.<\/strong> Who’s listed as the account holder for each number, and what minimum term you’ve signed up for.<\/li>\n
- How calls are currently routed.<\/strong> Who picks up first, what happens at 7pm, what happens when reception is busy. Sketch it on paper; it’s usually revealing.<\/li>\n
- Device inventory.<\/strong> Phones, fax machines, alarms connected to a phone line, door intercoms. The latter are the classic surprise on migration day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
If you don’t have reliable numbers on missed calls, that’s already the project’s first finding: you can’t improve what you don’t measure. We cover this in call statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Phase 2 \u2014 Preparing the network (the phase everyone skips)<\/h2>\n
Voice doesn’t tolerate what a file download tolerates. A 200-millisecond micro-glitch goes unnoticed downloading a PDF and is crystal clear on a call. Three things you need to have sorted beforehand:<\/p>\n
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- Traffic prioritization (QoS).<\/strong> Making sure voice takes priority over backups and streaming. This is the setting that resolves most quality complaints.<\/li>\n
- Cable at fixed workstations.<\/strong> Wifi is fine for a mobile on the move; for a desk phone, use cable.<\/li>\n
- A router up to the task.<\/strong> Consumer-grade equipment handles thousands of small packets per second poorly. With five simultaneous calls, it shows.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
A couple of days of quality testing before signing is worth it. If your network has packet loss, better to know before you have thirty people depending on it.<\/p>\n
Phase 3 \u2014 Designing the call routing<\/h2>\n
This is the phase that decides whether the investment is worth anything. The temptation is to replicate exactly what the old PBX did; that’s the mistake, because that setup was designed for a company you’re no longer.<\/p>\n
Decisions to make here \u2014 and they’re business decisions, not technical ones:<\/p>\n
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- What does the caller hear in the first three seconds: a person or a menu?<\/li>\n
- How many rings before jumping to the next destination.<\/li>\n
- What happens when everyone’s busy: queue or jump.<\/li>\n
- What happens outside business hours: voicemail, an AI voice agent, or forwarding to on-call staff.<\/li>\n
- Who can view statistics and who can listen to recordings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A counterintuitive piece of advice: fewer menu options. Five-option IVRs are designed for internal convenience, and the customer is the one who suffers through them. If you get fewer than twenty calls an hour, let a person answer.<\/p>\n
Phase 4 \u2014 Migration<\/h2>\n
The golden rule: coexistence before cutover<\/strong>. What works for an SME:<\/p>\n
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- The new PBX is set up in parallel with a temporary number.<\/li>\n
- Two or three real workstations are tested for a few days, including outbound calls, transfers, and recording.<\/li>\n
- The main number is ported on a low-volume day and time. Never a Monday morning, never at month-end close.<\/li>\n
- Forwarding from the old line is kept in place for a week or two as a safety net.<\/li>\n
- The old system is switched off only once nobody has reported an issue for a full week.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
And a warning that saves headaches: don’t cancel the old contract before porting is complete. If the line gets cancelled, the number can be released and lost. That’s irreversible.<\/p>\n
Phase 5 \u2014 Getting the team up and running<\/h2>\n
Resistance to change in telephony is real, and it always comes down to the same thing: people don’t know how to transfer a call. Twenty minutes of training per role and a one-page cheat sheet on every desk solves it.<\/p>\n
Fifteen days in, review with data in hand: missed calls, average wait time, which time slot they pile up in. That’s where the project starts paying back the investment, adjusting the routing based on facts instead of gut feeling. There’s almost always an uncomfortable discovery, along the lines of we’re missing calls every morning and had no idea<\/a>.<\/p>\n
- Cable at fixed workstations.<\/strong> Wifi is fine for a mobile on the move; for a desk phone, use cable.<\/li>\n
- Ownership of your numbers.<\/strong> Who’s listed as the account holder for each number, and what minimum term you’ve signed up for.<\/li>\n
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