There are several ways in which a Virtual Receptionist can direct calls to the right place.

Send calls to extension or voicemail

You can bypass the Virtual Receptionist menu and send a call directly to an extension or an extension’s voicemail. You can choose to play a greeting before the call is transferred. Users who would like to send calls to a dedicated receptionist during business hours and use the Virtual Receptionist menu after hours will find this feature useful.

Keypress Menu

Transfer to extension

You can assign up to ten direct extensions to a Virtual Receptionist’s key press menu. To get started, follow the instructions in our step-by-step guide.

Transfer to Virtual Receptionist

You can assign one or more keypresses to send the caller to another Virtual Receptionist. This is ideal for setting up a multi-level Virtual Receptionist system that allows customers to navigate through several levels until they have narrowed down the purpose of their call.

For example, a business may use the following setup:

Virtual Receptionist 1 offers customers the option to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish.

If the customer presses 1, they are redirected to Virtual Receptionist 2, which has all further communication in English.

If the customer presses 2, they are redirected to Virtual Receptionist 3, which has all further communication in Spanish.

This setup uses three Virtual Receptionists to create a multi-level system that directs the customer to the type of service they need. You can learn more about setting up keypress transfers to another Virtual Receptionist in our step-by-step guide.

Dial by extension

You can allow customers to dial by extension by following these instructions:

  1. Log in to office.ooma.com as an administrator and navigate to the Settings page.
  2. Locate the Virtual Receptionist whose key press assignments you wish to update and click the corresponding line.
  3. Click on the Settings page.
  4. Click “Enable dial-by-extension.” If you would like to make only certain extensions available for dial-by-extension, click “Directory Settings.”
  5. Click the checkboxes beside the names that will be available for dialing by extension.
  6. Save your changes.

Dial by name

You can allow customers to dial by name by assigning a key press to the company directory. To get started, follow the instructions in our step-by-step guide to set up the key press. Then, follow the instructions below to determine which employee extensions are included in the company directory:

  1. Log in to office.ooma.com as an administrator and navigate to the Settings page.
  2. Locate the Virtual Receptionist whose key press assignments you wish to update and click the corresponding line.
  3. Click on the Settings page.
  4. Click “Directory Settings.”
  5. Click the checkboxes beside the names that will be available in the company directory.
  6. Save your changes.