Multi-Location Phone Systems: Best Choices for Multiple Offices

Trying to transfer a call between multiple office locations is a nightmare. You have to coach the caller to remain on hold, manually disconnect, then redial the other office and pray someone picks up the phone promptly. Once connected, you have to introduce the caller again from the start.

It’s even worse when you need to organize a company-wide meeting or conference call. With no easy way to dial in, you rely on emailing multiple conference lines and access codes to different teams and office locations.

If this disjointed communication scenario sounds familiar, you’re likely using outdated phone systems across multiple locations and offices. Fortunately, there’s a much better way, thanks to unified communications (UC). 

Let’s look at how you can address all your business needs through one seamless, cloud-based communications platform for voice, video, messaging, and file sharing. 

Why You Want a Multi-Location Phone System?

Having a truly UC solution for a multi-site business offers incredible benefits compared to the constraints of traditional, disconnected phone solutions setups. Here are some key advantages:

Better customer experiences

Traditional on-premise PBX telephone systems operate in isolation from each location with no inherent integration between them. By transitioning to a cloud-based phone system, you break down those barriers and create a single, seamless collaboration platform for your entire organization across every location.

Here’s a quick example: Say you operate a popular restaurant chain in a large city. Customers often dial the wrong number suggested by Google to make reservations. With a unified phone system, your staff can transfer the call to the desired location without forcing them to hang up and dial a new, unfamiliar phone number. 

With a unified communication provider like Nextiva, your team can collaborate via phone, video, messaging, and file sharing in one app. This allows seamless communication and collaboration regardless of physical distance or location.

Related: How Restaurants Can Benefit From Call Center Software

Enhanced collaboration

Most multi-location phone systems combine essential workplace collaboration tools like HD video conferencing, voice/VoIP calls, team messaging, screen sharing, and file backup/sharing into one intuitive interface. This convergence allows distributed teams and employees across all your office locations to connect and collaborate effortlessly using whichever tools they need on demand.

For example, remote team members can transition from a voice call into a video meeting with screen share. They can also share and collaborate on files, documents, or updates through integrated team messaging channels.

Improved employee experience

With a cloud-based communication solution, your staff can access the full communication and collaboration capabilities from any device with an internet connection — including their smartphones and tablets when working remotely or traveling.

This empowers a more mobile, flexible workforce experience than traditional phone systems tied to physical desk locations. Your employees can make and receive calls, join video meetings, check voicemail, and chat with colleagues, whether they’re in the office, at home, or on the road.

Simplified management for IT

One of the biggest advantages of a unified communication solution is the centralized administration capabilities it provides to IT staff or admins through a single web-based management portal.

Instead of managing separate on-premise PBX systems independently at each office location, your IT team can use a cloud phone system to centrally manage all user provisioning, settings, call routing, security policies, system updates, and troubleshooting from one unified console.

Scalability for growth

Adding sites to your existing multi-office phone system is simple and easy as your business expands and grows into new building locations or markets. 

Seriously, it’s point-click-easy. You don’t need a multi-month (or multi-year) migration plan. There’s no need for complex on-site installations or reconfigurations of new hardware or PBX systems.

Since the UC service lives in the cloud, your admin simply has to provision the new location and users using the centralized management portal. This allows you to easily scale functionality and accommodate business growth without major system disruptions or technical resources compared to traditional on-prem setups.

Cost-effectiveness

With a cloud PBX, you eliminate the major upfront capital expenditure costs required to purchase, deploy, and maintain complex on-premise PBX hardware and infrastructure at every single office location you operate.

Instead, you pay a predictable monthly per-user subscription fee for the UCaaS services across all your locations. This pricing model provides better cost predictability and can be more cost-effective in the long term than the combined costs of on-prem equipment, maintenance, and support.

What to Look for When Choosing a Unified Communications Solution

With the demand for cloud UC rising, there’s no shortage of VoIP and UCaaS vendors trying to meet the needs of multi-location businesses like yours.

But not all solutions are created equal, so here are some factors to look for:

1) Centralized needs

The core capability you need is a UC service provider that can unify your business communication and collaboration needs into a single, fully integrated solution across every office and location. This should include:

• Cloud VoIP/voice calling: Easy-to-use voice/video calling and conferencing capabilities for incoming calls and customer support
• Unified messaging: Integrated voicemail, chat, SMS, fax, and even voicemail-to-email transcription capabilities
• Online meetings: HD video conferencing with screen sharing
• Collaboration tools: File sharing, backup, and team messaging channels
• Mobile apps: Ability to access all tools from any device/location

If your company is invested in Microsoft 365 or Office apps, finding a UC solution offering deep integration with Microsoft Teams is ideal. This allows you to make/receive calls, view voicemails, and share files directly within the Teams interface your staff is already using day-to-day.

What’s Your UCaaS Readiness Score? Find out if you’d benefit from unified communications. Take the free quiz!

2) Onboarding and user convenience

You’ll want a VoIP phone system that’s quick and easy to deploy across your entire organization without major user training or change management hurdles. Cloud-based call management solutions have an inherent advantage over rigid on-premises systems in terms of user-friendly installation and intuitive interfaces.

Top UC vendors like Nextiva offer a modern user experience with a clean, straightforward interface design across their mobile and desktop apps. Your employees should be able to intuitively make calls, manage meetings, access voicemail, chat, and leverage the system’s other unified capabilities without extensive ramp-up or training.

The system’s calling features, in particular, should be consumer-friendly — for example, it should be possible to transfer calls between locations and extensions with just a few clicks.

3) Multi-location communication

Facilitating frictionless cross-site communication is a must-have. Look for a business communication platform with robust call-handling capabilities like:

• Location-agnostic call transfers and forwarding: With just a few clicks, employees can effortlessly transfer voice calls between different offices, extensions, and mobile devices/remote users.
• Virtual receptionists: Route callers to the right person/department efficiently using an advanced virtual receptionist to give callers a menu to reach the right team or office.
• Unified corporate directory: Quickly find and connect with colleagues across any location by simply searching the centralized directory by name or department.

A UC system that provides different locations with independence makes communicating across your multi-site organization seamless.

4) Centralized administration 

Centralized administration and oversight is a crucial capability that vastly simplifies multi-site UC deployments and ongoing management duties.

With visibility into real-time phone system health and performance data across all office locations, your IT team can rapidly troubleshoot issues, optimize call routing, and ensure consistent uptime for your communication infrastructure. The unified analytics also provides valuable intelligence around call volumes, usage patterns, team collaboration behaviors, and more to drive better business strategies.

Scale Your Communications With Nextiva

You gain a lot more functionality with a cloud-based phone system designed for multiple locations and offices. Here are several ways you can improve your corporate communications:

• Seamless collaboration across locations via integrated voice, video, messaging, and file-sharing tools
• An enhanced mobile employee phone service experience with access to communications from anywhere
• Simplified phone number management through centralized administration and provisioning
• Robust multi-site and multi-line call handling features like transfers, attendants, and directory integration
• Scalability without complex upgrades to easily add new locations as you grow, 
• Cost-effectiveness with predictable per-user cloud subscription pricing

When evaluating business communication solutions, prioritize ones that provide an intuitive user experience, centralized, unified capabilities, multi-location optimization, robust security/reliability, and a proven track record serving businesses like yours.

Nextiva emerges as the preferred all-in-one UCaaS provider tailored for companies with multiple US locations. Its cloud communications platform tightly integrates VoIP calling, video conferencing, team messaging, mobile apps, and productivity tools into one easy-to-use solution.

Key multi-site features include seamless call transfers between locations, centralized management of all offices, CRM integrations, and per-user pricing that simplifies scaling. With built-in training, 24/7 support, and enterprise-grade uptime, Nextiva delivers a future-ready VoIP phone system for small, medium, and large multi-location businesses.

Take control of your communication needs today. Unify your entire organization with Nextiva and unlock enhanced collaboration, mobility, and cost savings across all your locations.