How can I set specific times of day for my business phone to ring?

Question

Our business is home based. We had a call tonight at 10 oclock. Our children were awakened. My wife will forget to turn the ringer on in the morning. Manual forwarding does not work. I need automatic time set Do Not Disturb (DND). I have att small business service.

Answer 1

THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT

I use Accessline to handle all my calls, both business and personal.  Check them out at www.accessline.com

The coolest thing about this service, called "follow me numbers", is you can set a schedule for what time you want you the calls to go where.  In your question, for example, you could tell accessline to route calls from 6pm until 8am (or whatever your working hours aren't) to your business voice mail and to your business phone during work hours.  You can set different schedules for every day of the week, too.  Also, if you have email, you get notified by email when someone leaves a voice mail.  If Accessline can detect the phone number of the caller, that will be in the subject line of the email.  Then you can decide whether it is important enough to return the call then or the next day.

You can also change the routing to any phone number you want online.  So, if you go on vacation, for example, you can route the business calls to your hotel phone (not that you would, but...you could)

They are reasonably priced for what you get and I've never had any trouble with them.  I used to be on the road 80% of the time and I used them to keep my calls following me and my customers only had to remember 1 phone number.

Good luck!

Answer 2

You should be able to find somebody locally (tv or computer shop) that can wire up a relay to disconnect the phone's ringer (or the entire phone) when the relay has power. The relay could be controlled by a 24-hour electric repeating timer. Such a timer is used to control lights at night and can be found in Home Depot or Lowe's.

Answer 3

You business should never close otherwise you will not make it. Best thing to do is have an answer machine and the outgoing message should say that you are out on another job right now and will call them back as soon as possible. Don't call anyone after 10pm or before 8am.