New Feature, Opening Hours | Basic, Makes Setting Timetables Easier Than Ever
Alex Sudheim
To help your customers as effectively as possible, it is paramount for your business to be optimally accessible by telephone. You determine your accessibility via the smartphone app; in the webphone and in Freedom.
However, since businesses are by nature flexible entities and not rigid automatons, sometimes being unavailable for a while is necessary. For example, you might not want to be reached over official public holidays; religious holidays or when your company is hosting an important event or team-building day.
Custom Control
With the newly upgraded Opening Hours | Basic feature you can now easily customise your company’s schedule to suit the dates and times your business is not available. This way you can devote your full attention to the things that really matter, such as looking for chocolate eggs with the kids over Easter or getting your team into shape on World Yoga Day.
But wait a minute – the Opening Hours feature already exists in Freedom, doesn’t it? You are 100% correct. However, Opening Hours | Basic is a sleeker, streamlined version of the feature which makes life easier for both your business and your customers.
A Simpler Timetable
From now on it is possible to use Opening hours | Basic to create a simple timetable to determine the opening hours of your company. You can indicate the days and times on which your company is open and select on which public holidays you do not want to be available.
In those instances you can, for example, forward incoming calls to a voicemail or answering service when you are not available. The primary advantage here is that you only have to set your regular opening hours and availability on public holidays once and not each and every year, regardless of what dates said holidays fall on.
To familiarise yourself with how to set up Opening Hours | Basic step by step, check our comprehensive help page on the subject.
Opening Hours | Advanced & Temporary Redirect
Most companies can manage with a simple time schedule to optimally arrange their accessibility. For these organisations, Opening Hours | Basic is the simplest solution. However, certain specialised companies – such as those with on-call services or practices with telephone consultation hours – might require more elaborate time routing,
The Opening Hours module that was already available in Freedom will continue to exist under the name Opening Hours | Advanced. Only the name is different, nothing else. With Opening Hours | Advanced, you can set time groups in detail with steps that determine what should happen if someone calls your telephone number and when.
For example, do you need to quickly transfer your calls because of spontaneous Friday afternoon drinks at the office? Then you don’t have to do anything with your opening hours. For such situations we have the Temporary Redirect feature. This allows you to easily forward all incoming calls to voicemail.
For a comprehensive overview of how to make the most of the Opening Hours | Advanced feature, check out our help page on the subject.
When To Use Which Feature?
Opening hours | Basic; Opening Hours | Advanced and Temporary Redirect are all great features, but when do you use which one?
Opening hours | Basic
This feature is perfect for companies that don’t have complicated opening hours. Think of “open every day from 8.30am to 5pm, excluding holidays.”
Opening hours | Advanced
This feature is the optimal solution for organisations that operate according to more complex opening hours. Think of a doctor’s service that is less accessible during certain consultation hours or where accessibility changes during unofficial holidays and religious holidays.
Temporary Redirect
This feature is tremendously useful if you are unavailable during exceptional circumstances. You can quickly temporarily redirect your calls without affecting your universal opening hours.
For more information on how to use Temporary Redirect, check out the help pages on how to use it on the Voys 4G App; on the Webphone and in Freedom.
Further Improvements
This brand-new version of the Opening hours | Basic feature is only the first iteration thereof. Our team is already hard at work on updated, upgraded and improved versions of the feature.
In the future you will also be able to select religious holidays as well as non-official “holidays” such as Star Wars Day or International Women’s Day. Furthermore, we are currently developing a new version of the feature where you can set your time schedules via the mobile app and Webphone without having to log in to Freedom.
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