Memphis Business Phone Systems
Tell us your zip code and how many people use the phones. Memphis and DeSoto County providers send quotes for hosted, SIP or on-site systems.
Freight keeps the phones busy
Memphis moves things. The FedEx hub at the airport, the rail yards, the Mississippi River barge terminals and the warehouse corridor along Interstates 40 and 55 mean a big share of local businesses are freight forwarders, trucking companies, distribution centers and the firms that serve them. Those offices have a particular phone profile: a few dispatchers or customer service reps taking rapid calls all day. Drivers need to reach them from the road. Customers call at odd hours.
For that kind of operation, the features that matter are call queues, ring groups, and a mobile app that lets a dispatcher answer from a truck stop. Call recording helps settle the argument about what a driver was told on a Tuesday. Reporting is worth asking for too. If your queue shows wait times, you can see that Thursday afternoons are when you are short a person.
Across the state line
The Memphis market does not stop at the Tennessee border. Southaven, Olive Branch and Horn Lake in Mississippi have some of the largest distribution buildings in the region, and West Memphis in Arkansas sits across the river with its own trucking and rail business. Plenty of companies have an office in Memphis and a warehouse in DeSoto County, or the other way round.
This is where a hosted system pays off. One set of extensions can cover both sites, and a call to the Memphis front desk can land on a phone in Olive Branch without anybody knowing the difference. Ask the provider how it handles numbers from different area codes and states, and whether porting your existing numbers across a state line adds time. It sometimes does.
Also ask whether the E911 address is set per location. A phone sitting in a Horn Lake warehouse must send that warehouse address, not the main office downtown.
Medicine in the Medical District and out east
The other big employer cluster is healthcare. The Medical District near downtown has major hospitals and a children's research hospital, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center trains a lot of the region's clinicians. Out east along Poplar Avenue and into Germantown and Collierville, independent physician groups, dental practices, imaging centers and therapy clinics fill the office buildings.
The small practices want to replace the old landline setup and keep the same number. An after-hours message that does not sound like a robot is the other ask. Fax is still common, so confirm that it is supported. HIPAA applies to voicemail transcripts and call recordings, so ask where those are stored.
Bartlett, Germantown and Collierville also hold accountants and insurance agencies, with an attorney or two down the hall, usually in offices under twenty people. A hosted system fits them well because there is no equipment to maintain. They tend to want a receptionist console and a clear auto attendant.
Ice, thunderstorms and the grid
Winter ice and summer thunderstorms take down power in Memphis more often than anything else will. Memphis Light, Gas and Water is a large municipal utility, and outages do happen. If your office goes dark, a hosted number can be forwarded to cell phones from any browser. The region is also seismically active, which is one more reason to prefer a system that does not live in a single equipment closet, though a dead transformer is the likelier problem.
Internet is the weak point in either case. Most of the city has AT&T and Comcast available, and some areas have fiber. If your phones are your business, buy a business-class circuit rather than a residential plan, and think about a cellular backup router.
Beale Street and the front-of-house phone
Downtown Memphis runs on visitors. Beale Street, the hotels along the river, the barbecue places that people drive across states for, and Graceland down in Whitehaven all depend on calls: reservations, catering orders, group bookings, tour inquiries. May is heavy, with a month of festivals, and the call volume jumps with it.
A restaurant owner in Midtown does not need a switchboard. A single main number that rings the host stand, then rolls to the manager's cell after closing, covers most of it. A message line tied to the main number helps too, since a caller who cannot get through will often send a text instead. Ask whether the system can switch to a holiday or event greeting with one click.
Questions worth asking
How many days will the number port take, and will your old service be cancelled before the new one is live? That one mistake leaves businesses without a main line for a day. Does the quote include the desk phones, or are they a separate line? Is the mobile app included for every user, and does messaging cost extra? What is the term, and what does it cost to leave early?
For small shops, the answer often turns out to be a plain hosted system with a few call groups and a mobile app. For a sprawling warehouse campus, it may be a hosted system plus overhead paging. Neither is complicated, but the quotes will not look alike until you tell the providers which one you are.
Tell them early about the fax line too. It is always the thing someone remembers a week after cutover.
