Call Blocking on your small business phone

When your business phone rings, you could be connected with a prospective customer. However, answering the phone could also unfortunately connect you to a robocall spammer.

Your team doesn’t have time to waste, and small businesses can be more productive without annoying robocalls. By using the right call blocking technology, you could help stop unwanted calls before your phone rings.

Find out how your workday can change when you’re using call blocking on your small business phone system.

Call blocking for small business phones

With Ooma’s integrated call blocking, you’ll have the tools to help stop unwanted phone calls before your phone rings. Rather than an add-on call blocking app, this feature is embedded directly into your multi-line phone system. This can help you avoid integration problems, and you can avoid managing multiple systems.

The problem of robocalls is growing. While much of the attention has been stopping robocalls on personal phone lines, there is a productivity cost to not using call blocking on work lines.

With Ooma’s Enhanced Call Blocking for small business phones, you can reduce unwanted calls.

Businesses get four categories of call blocking so you can customize your settings based on your needs. Call blocking options include:

• Block known spammers: This proprietary list of known spammers has been identified at the network level and through Ooma’s community of users. Ooma’s response team continually monitors and updates known spammers based on new phone spam tactics so you have strong protection against changing threats.
• Block suspected spammers: This list of 2.1 million phone numbers has been confirmed to be telemarketers, robocallers and phone spammers. Blocking the numbers associated with unwanted callers gives you an additional blanket of protection.
• Block anonymous callers: When a caller is hiding his or her phone number, it’s frequently a sign they’re a scammer who doesn’t want you to know who’s calling. Blocking callers who don’t reveal their identity can help you stop this category of scammers.
• Customizable call blocking: Your call blocking needs are unique, and with customizable call blocking, you can specify numbers you don’t want to receive calls from. Plus, this business-wide block list protects all employee phone lines.

Not only does Ooma give you the tools to activate individual call blocking categories, but you also can choose what the caller experiences. For example, you can send blocked calls directly to voicemail, you can let callers know they’ve been blocked, or callers can experience a continuous ring that wastes their time.

Ooma business phone service goes pro

Ooma Office phone service has been beloved by customers and reviewers for years, including being named the #1 business phone service in PC Magazine’s Business Choice Awards for the past nine years.

We’re now debuting more choice with Ooma Office Pro, the business phone service designed to meet the advanced needs of professionals. It adds several premium features that provide better solutions to problems that some businesses need to solve.

Ooma Office Pro includes all of the great features of Ooma Office. On top of that, users get added productivity boosts with Enhanced Call Blocking, Call Recording, and Voicemail Transcription. In addition, there are higher usage limits for extension monitoring, call park and conference room participants.

Even with its robust calling features, Ooma Office Pro costs just $24.95 per user per month. That’s much less than many other business phone providers. We found that business phone service from cable companies can be as high as $40 or $55 per user each month.

Ooma has been providing small businesses with a top phone solution for years. Unlike traditional PBX systems, Ooma transmits calls over your internet connection, providing high-quality connectivity along with the flexibility today’s workforce needs. All users get unlimited calling on their desk phones, and users have the same level of access when using their work lines on their mobile phone via the Ooma Office business phone app. When using the app, Ooma gives you the tools to seamlessly answer a work call or make calls on your work line when you’re out of the office.

Plans include essential features such as caller ID and advanced call management tools like a multi-level auto attendant, ring groups, conference bridge, virtual fax and more.

How does call blocking change your workday?

Call blocking can be a game-changer for your business. When you use Ooma to help block unwanted calls, your business could change in multiple ways.

1. Let technology do the work for you

Just as Ooma’s Virtual Receptionist is a digital solution to help your small business route incoming calls, Ooma’s call blocking is a digital tool that helps you avoid unwanted calls.

Sure, it’s easy enough for employees to hang up on robocalls. However, when high-tech automation is being used to make massive numbers of spam phone calls, shouldn’t advanced call blocking be used to fight back?

You don’t need an employee to hang up on spammers. Let Ooma do that for you.

2. Improved focus

Today’s workday already has plenty of notifications, distractions and multitasking opportunities. Robocall scams don’t need to be another interruption.

When you’re using call blocking technology, you’re taking steps to help reduce the chaos so you can focus on the phone calls that matter.

3. Improve productivity

For each interruption, it can take an average of 23 minutes to return to the task at hand. This productivity loss can quickly accumulate when you multiply it by the frequency of spam calls, the number of employees, and the pervasiveness of unwanted calls over time.

When you use call blocking to reduce the unnecessary interruptions, you’re recovering lost time. This improved productivity adds value back into your business.

4. Reduces annoyance

Robocalls are annoying. Using call blocking to reduce annoyance may not seem like a quantifiable business gain. However, recent studies about today’s workplaces have suggested that worker satisfaction is not defined only by financial incentives. You can support worker happiness by taking steps that have a long-term positive impact, such as limiting annoying phone calls.

Workers who face fewer minor annoyances during their workday may be more likely to have higher job satisfaction and stay with a company longer. In a competitive marketplace where good employees are highly sought after, finding ways to reduce annoyances can add up to meaningful workplace improvements.

Learn more about how Ooma’s small business phone services can help you to be more connected and more productive.