Moving a business from an old phone system to a cloud service is mostly preparation. The technology is the simple part. What goes wrong is nearly always something nobody wrote down: a forgotten fax number, an after-hours rule, a door phone.
Before choosing anything
- List every number you own, including fax lines, alarm lines and numbers printed on old marketing.
- Map how calls flow today. Who answers, what happens when they do not, what changes after hours and on holidays.
- Find the special cases. Paging, door entry, elevator phones and card terminals that use a phone line.
- Check the network. Voice calls need a stable connection and a network that gives them priority.
Build it before the move
The new system should be built and tested while the old one is still taking calls. Record the greetings. Set up the menus, queues and voicemail. Give staff their phones or apps and let them make test calls. If the system connects to your CRM, test that too.
Moving the numbers
Transferring numbers from one carrier to another is called porting. It needs the account details from your current carrier to match exactly, and the date is set by the carriers. Do not cancel the old service until the numbers have moved; cancelling early can lose them. Temporary forwarding covers the gap.
On the day
- Have someone call every main number and every menu option.
- Check after-hours handling that evening.
- Keep the old system powered for a few days in case something was missed.
- Collect staff feedback at the end of the first week and adjust.
For a contact center, add agent training, queue reporting and the CRM connection to the list, and run the two systems side by side for a short period if you can.
Related service: Digital phone systems.