Business VoIP explained
How the calls travel, and what you give up by leaving copper.
Read the main guide
Memphis, TN
Business VoIP in Memphis, TN
One area code covers this city and nothing sits over the top of it, so the number question is settled before you start. What a phone system earns its keep on here is a working day that begins in the dark, in a metro that runs into two other states.
Disclosure: AldoMedia is a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice. If you sign up through a link on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would set up for our own clients, and we say plainly below who should not buy this.
One code, and a market that does not stop at the state line
Every business number anchored in this city carries 901, and nothing is layered over it. Nobody weighs whether newer digits read as well as older ones, and a caller takes nothing from your number beyond the fact that it is a Memphis one.
That is useful, because the market is not so tidy. The built-up area runs past the state line in more than one direction, so a fair share of your customers, and some of your staff, dial a code that is not 901. We have not printed those codes, because a page selling phone service should not guess at somebody else's numbering. Have your provider confirm one in writing.
So take the 901 number, put it on everything, stop thinking about it. Which city you want to sound like is a question for a business selling into several of them, and it sits on business VoIP in Tennessee.
The hours a freight town actually rings on
Memphis keeps Central time in an economy that does not clock off at five. Cargo moves overnight, warehouses take deliveries while the sales office is dark, and a dispatcher with a question at half past five in the morning is not an unusual caller here. He is a Tuesday.
Time zones widen the edges. A customer out east rings at nine of their morning and gets you at eight of yours, and a buyer out west reaches you well into your evening. Neither thinks the hour is odd, and a number that rings out sends them to the next name on the list.
This is what a phone system is good at. A recorded greeting answers on a schedule you set, says the hours out loud and tells an after-hours caller what happens next. Then you decide which early calls ring a mobile and which take a message. Being undecided is the expensive option.
Distance does the rest. A service call can run the better part of an hour each way, so whoever ought to answer is usually in a vehicle. One number reaching a truck, a counter or a laptop is what a virtual phone system is for.
Heat, storms and the weeks that decide the year
The calendar here shows up in call logs, and it is not a northern one.
- Long humid summers. When the heat settles in for a fortnight, every cooling contractor in the city takes the same day's worth of calls, from people who ring three companies and take whoever answers.
- Severe storm season. Wind, hail and water getting into a building produce calls during the storm, not the week after, which is exactly when nobody is at a desk.
- The occasional winter ice event. It shuts the office for a day or two while the work carries on regardless, and a business whose only phone is bolted to a wall in there goes quiet with it.
A missed call in an ordinary February is a nuisance. The same call in the first hot spell of the summer is a job that goes to somebody else.
Storm season carries one consequence worth saying plainly. Your phones now depend on your power and your connection, a real change from copper. Set the rule that sends calls to a mobile when the system cannot answer on the day you install it.
Nobody built a Memphis edition of this
Nothing inside a business phone system was made for this city. It is the same product a print shop in Ohio buys, run from data centres that are not in Tennessee, and a provider hinting at a local version is describing a landing page.
We are in Buffalo, New York. No presence here, no van, no local number to ring, and on phones we are a paid affiliate rather than the company operating the network. Anything we do arrives down a line, which suits a phone system, because nearly every fault is a setting or a connection. If a fault in your trade means somebody in the building that morning, buy from an installer in the city instead.
What is local is inside your own walls
What does vary is what a signal does once it reaches you. Much of the work here happens in metal buildings, in warehouses full of steel racking, and in shops where the phone sits a long way from whatever the internet arrives on. A cordless handset at the far end of that will not sound like a phone call. Run a cable to the desk that takes the most calls, and test from the corner the phone will live in. If what reaches the building is the problem, no provider can fix it from their end, and the trade against copper is on VoIP vs landline.
Who should not switch, in Memphis terms
There is a real list of reasons to stay where you are, written out in full on our business VoIP guide. What follows is only what this city adds to it.
- Your paperwork still comes off a fax machine. In freight and in healthcare administration, rate confirmations, delivery receipts and referrals arrive that way long after the rest of the world moved on. Settle that before the phones move, not after.
- Nobody has decided who owns the early call. If those before-dawn calls should reach a person, that is a hiring decision and no phone system makes it for you. Route them to a chair nobody sits in and you have bought a faster trip to voicemail.
Keeping the number already painted on the vehicle is its own job, set out on business phone numbers. If half your buyers have never seen a 901 number, weigh a toll-free number alongside it.
Common questions
Memphis business phone questions
Is 901 the only area code we can get in Memphis?
For a number anchored in this city, yes. Nothing sits over the top of it, so there is no newer code to be talked into or out of. What changes is which numbers a provider has the day you order, so have yours confirmed in writing before it goes on a sign.
A lot of our customers are over the state line. Do we need a second number for them?
Usually not. People either side of that line treat this as one place, and a 901 number reads as local to somebody who crosses it every working morning. A second local number earns its place when you are opening a genuinely separate market, and only if somebody answers it properly.
Half our calls come in before anybody is at a desk. Is that a phone problem or a staffing problem?
Both, and it helps to separate them. A system can answer at five in the morning with your business name on it, take the details and leave the message where somebody reads it at seven. What it cannot do is quote the job. If those callers need an answer rather than an acknowledgement, you are buying a person.
The pieces, each on its own page
Worth reading before you order anything.
A greeting for the early shift
The recorded message that answers when nobody is at a desk.
Auto attendantOne number, three states of customers
One number reaching a truck, a laptop and the counter.
Virtual phone systemThe website side of the same city is on web hosting in Memphis, TN.
Coverage
A VoIP line runs over the internet, so there is no network to be at the edge of and no corner of the country where the service gets thin. That is why this map has no holes in it. The shading is not signal strength, it is how much has been written down, and Tennessee is one of the darker ones because it has city pages of its own.
- States with city pages
- States with a guide of their own
- The state you are reading about
Every state is linked. Business VoIP by state and city lists all fifty of them, and the 80 cities with a page, as ordinary links.
A number that answers before the office does
Tell us how calls reach you today and which weeks you cannot afford to miss. If your connection is the real problem, we will say that instead.