Problems Grasshopper Solves (With Real-life Examples)

Ever look out the window and wish you could sit in the sun for just a few minutes? Ever feel like you had to stay inside because you needed to be near your business line? Maybe you have an assistant or receptionist, but they only work a few days per week.

We totally get it—you can’t leave callers hanging, especially if they’re an important customer, partner, or investor.

With Grasshopper, you can:

• Forward each and every call to your cell AND office line at the same time.
• Forward calls to your employees’ cell phones if you haven’t answered.
• Send calls to your cell if no one answers at the office.
• Set up informational extensions to answer common questions. For example, you might record your hours or directions to your business on an extension.

You don’t have to spend your days inside waiting for a call. Grasshopper’s virtual phone system allows you to work from wherever you are.

Features used to stop sitting by the phone:

• Custom Main Greeting
• Call Forwarding
• Informational Extensions

Have you ever woken up to a mountain of voicemails full of questions about ten different topics? When all of your callers have to leave messages in the same place, it can get messy really quickly. And when you’re the one fielding all of those inquiries, it can be time consuming and frustrating.

Messages that come to your voicemail can be pretty hard to keep organized, but Grasshopper allows you to route callers to different extensions based on what they need. Now you can address your callers by category and even delegate certain topics to be dealt with by other employees.

Amber of Bambu Earth says, “I can access customer service calls, wholesale inquiries, and vendor calls separately, saving me a lot of time.” She loves the ease of organizing calls that Grasshopper affords her. “I can even assign specific voicemail boxes to different team members,” Amber says.

Let’s face it, callers leaving voicemails want to hear back from you as soon as possible. Organizing your messages and routing voicemail boxes to the best person to deal with that subject is the best way for you to get your business organized, get back to customers, and save yourself a lot of extra stress.

Features used to get organized:

• Custom Main Greeting
• Extensions
• Call Routing Extensions
• Informational Extensions

Are your employees always in the office when they’re working? In today’s world, probably not. When you have work getting done at different times from various locations, it can be tough to keep track of employees and tasks.

360clean is a janitorial company, so their employees are usually on location at clients’ offices. Brent Bodiford of the company says they love being able to “timestamp” employees.

They use their voicemail to allow employees to clock in and out from the client’s location. “This allows us to hear the employee’s voice, and we know how long that employee has been there, so we can be assured a good quality of clean has been executed,” Brent said.

Whether you want to monitor employees’ progress, keep track of their location, or just be able to communicate with employees from anywhere, Grasshopper’s system has the features you need to keep in touch and oversee your employees.

Features used to track employees:

• Voicemail & Fax to Email
• Extensions
• Call Routing Extensions

As a small business owner, you’re pretty important to your company. That usually means that your work isn’t confined to just when you’re sitting at your desk. You want to be available to customers, employees, and partners whenever they need you. But does that mean you have to hand out your personal cell number?

Not with Grasshopper. From Call Forwarding to Extensions, we’re all about helping you maintain privacy while staying connected to your business.

Jason Potter of VidTime Online has a standard extension for his office phone, but he also designated another extension that he doesn’t advertise. It forwards directly to his cell phone and he can share it at his discretion. “I didn’t want to give out my personal cell phone number,” Jason said.

Whether you set up your toll-free or local number to ring straight to your cell phone or just have your calls forwarded after hours, Grasshopper’s phone system has all the tools you need to get some privacy where you want it.

Features used for enhanced privacy:

• Extensions
• Call Forwarding
• Call Screening & Announce

How many times have you been hard at work and been forced to answer the phone? Then when you answer, the caller is looking for someone else. Maybe people call over and over again with the same questions. It happens all the time.

Grasshopper’s Custom Main Greeting, Extensions, and Informational Extensions eliminate this problem. “Grasshopper has helped me manage my time much better,” says Andrew Armitage, VintageChauffering. “It routes calls to the people who need to get them without someone needing to stop and answer the phone and then transfer the calls.”

If you’re answering the same questions over and over again, you can set up informational extensions. People often record directions to their brick-and-mortar locations and directions to their location with these extensions. That way when someone calls asking how to get to you, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing to explain.

Features used to claim back your time:

• Custom Main Greeting
• Extensions
• Call Routing Extensions
• Informational Extensions

When you’re a small business, there aren’t many people around who can pick up the slack when you wanna head to the beach. But as an entrepreneur, taking the occasional vacation is super important to ensuring that you are your best, most focused self.

Imagine if you could answer all of your calls from that beach? Grasshopper’s Call Forwarding and Voicemail & Fax to Email allow you to be accessible from pretty much any vacation spot you choose. Our Call Routing Extensions help make sure you’re only dealing with the most important of issues while you’re relaxing.

Annie of SkinOwl tells us, “We’re able to be more mobile because of Grasshopper. We can answer calls on the go and not have to be in our office.” That makes her pretty excited. “More vacations are definitely in our future!” she says.

Whether you want to work from the beach or completely unplug from your business, Grasshopper has the tools to help you. With our system in place, you can come back refreshed, renewed, and up to date on everything your business needs.

Features used to take a vacation:

• Call Forwarding
• Voicemail & Fax to Email
• Call Routing Extensions

No one likes to think about crises, but that doesn’t stop them from happening. When disaster does strike, you absolutely need to be able to communicate and get information out.

Often times, these disasters can have an effect on traditional phone lines. Land lines can be destroyed by natural disasters and cell networks can be overloaded with traffic leading to limited service. But Grasshopper’s phone system prevails!

Following Hurricane Katrina, serial entrepreneur Scott Wolfe—currently of Wolfe Law Group—was able to use Grasshopper to stay in touch with a team of 50. “Standard phone networks went off the grid…for months,” Scott said. Being able to communicate in the wake of the storm allowed them to get organized and start restoring the community.

You can also get information out 24/7 by using Grasshopper’s informational extensions. Callers can receive your message whether you can answer or not, and you can update the information as often as you need to.

Features used to have a disaster plan:

• Informational Extensions
• Extensions
• Call Forwarding

There’s really no underestimating the freedom and flexibility that being able to answer calls on-the-go offers you. Have to run an errand in the middle of the day? Pick up the kids from summer camp at 2?

Grasshopper allows you to easily leave the office whenever you need to without worrying about missing calls or being inaccessible. The same benefits are available to your employees, too. “When our team members travel for business, their numbers can easily travel with them,” said Sophie of Globalme. “This is a big advantage for us.”

Anywhere you can take your cell phone, you can answer calls from your business line. That means you can be flexible while still catering to customers, partners, and investors who need to contact you. Be responsive and stay professional; Grasshopper allows you to do both. Callers will still hear your custom main greeting, and they’ll never know you’re on a cell phone!

Features used to answer calls on-the-go:

• Call Forwarding
• Voicemail & Fax to Email
• Read Your Voicemail

Technology allows us to work from anywhere, and that means many new companies employ people from all corners of the country. Remote teams are great, but sometimes people can’t stay on the same page and have trouble keeping track of calls and emails.

Grasshopper can forward calls anywhere, which means that an employee in St. Louis can easily be connected to another in Oklahoma City, just by using their cell phones.

The Wildlife Hotline uses this strategy to cope with a call center that’s spread between Missouri and Illinois. “When a call comes in to our main queue, it rings everyone who is scheduled at that moment–which might be 10 different people across two states. It works perfectly and we love it,” says Angela Wintrode.

Grasshopper can also help companies expand who they hire. Dr. Robert D Carmichael, founder of UVUIT Technologies, wants the right people, no matter where they live. “With 15 new hires expected in the next six months, Grasshopper has eliminated the geographic restrictions we’d normally use to filter candidates,” he says.

When you sit down at your desk in the morning, have you ever been afraid to check your voicemail? Do you get overwhelmed by all of the messages and find yourself unsure of how to handle them all?

Amber Hawthorne of Bambu Earth knows exactly how that is. “Before Grasshopper,” she said, “I had no way of organizing callers and messages. Now I can access customer service calls, wholesale inquiries, and vendor calls separately, saving me a lot of time.”

Grasshopper offers many features that can help you sift through that mountain of voicemails. Attending to messages is quick, easy, and pain-free!

Features used to tackle voicemails:

• Extensions
• Call Routing Extensions
• Name Directory

When you’re a small company, it can be hard to compete with the big guys. But with Grasshopper, your callers will never be able to tell the difference. Whether you’re working from a 12-story office building or a couch in your home, your phone system will sound just as professional.

Bambu Earth’s Amber wanted her cell phone to sound as professional as a million dollar company. “Many times before Grasshopper, customers would leave messages unsure if they’d actually reached Bambu Earth. Now, to callers, it seems like they’re calling a company office landline,” she said.

No matter the size of your company, customers are going to expect big business service. Grasshopper allows you to look, sound, and feel just like you’re sitting in a big, corporate office. Your callers won’t even notice a difference.

Features used to sound professional:

• Toll Free Numbers
• Custom Main Greeting
• Call Forwarding

Being a small business doesn’t mean your products and services aren’t better than the big players in your industry. But customers often prefer to do business with bigger companies, finding them more capable and reliable. Grasshopper’s phone system allows you to look and feel just like one of the big guys!

Tim Grassin of Stinson Design knows a thing or two about being little. Stinson Design is a small design firm, but they work with big name brands like Under Armour and Redbull. “Grasshopper has helped us secure many of the clients we currently work with,” Tim said. “The toll free number, automated messages, and extensions have made us look much larger.”

For some reason, big business is usually associated with professionalism and legitimacy. So it’s important to be able to communicate these qualities to potential customers regardless of your actual size. That’s what Grasshopper is designed for, so many of our features will help you do just that!

Features used to seem bigger:

• Toll Free Numbers
• Extensions
• Voice Studio

Does it drive you crazy to find missed calls on your business line? When it comes to your business, a missed call can mean anything from an unahppy customer to losing out on a new sale. So it’s no wonder so many small business owners hate missing a phone call.

Bryan Marriott of P1 Learning feels the same, and he’s not coy about it. “I hate missing a phone call,” he said. “I love that we can patch calls in multiple directions to multiple people.”

His Grasshopper system is set up so that if customer support doesn’t answer the call, it rings everyone else in the company, until it gets answered. Eventually, even the CEO’s phone will ring!

Whether you’re running errands, on vacation, or just away from your desk, it’s important that your callers always have someone to talk to. When your business phone gets answered, you project a brand that’s reliable, cares about customers, and works hard to be there for them. And that’s powerful.

Features used to never miss a call:

• Custom Main Greeting
• Call Forwarding