How to Onboard New Employees to Your Business Phone System
A new employee who does not know how to use the phone system properly is a liability from the moment they start fielding customer calls. They transfer calls incorrectly, do not know how to retrieve voicemails, accidentally put callers on hold without music, and create impressions that undermine the professional image your business has worked to build. A structured phone system onboarding process eliminates all of this friction in under an hour.
Before Day One: Set Up the Account
With Vivant’s cloud phone system, creating a new employee’s phone account takes five minutes from the admin portal. Before the employee’s first day, create their extension, assign their direct dial number, set up their voicemail box with a temporary PIN, add them to the appropriate ring groups (sales, support, or departmental), and install and configure the softphone or mobile app on their device if hardware has not been shipped. When the employee arrives, their phone is ready to use.
Day One: Core Features Training (30 Minutes)
The core features every employee needs to know in their first hour are how to make and receive calls, how to transfer calls (both blind transfer and consultative transfer), how to place a call on hold and retrieve it, how to access and manage voicemail, how to use the company directory to find colleagues, and how to access the mobile or desktop app. Cover these six skills and your new employee can handle 90 percent of call scenarios effectively from day one.
Week One: Setting Up Voicemail and Preferences
During the first week, ensure each new employee records their personal voicemail greeting, sets up their voicemail-to-email notification, and personalizes their Do Not Disturb schedule if applicable. Review the company’s call handling policies — when calls should be transferred, when it is appropriate to take a message, how escalations work — so expectations are clear before any situation arises.
Ongoing Training and System Updates
As your phone system adds features or your team’s needs evolve, maintain an internal reference document for the most common call handling scenarios and ensure new features are communicated to the full team with brief tutorials. Vivant’s admin portal includes a help center with video tutorials organized by feature — share specific tutorial links with employees who need to learn particular capabilities rather than sending them to a generic help page.
Making Offboarding Just as Simple
When an employee leaves, deactivate their extension immediately from the admin portal. Redirect their direct dial number to an active team member or ring group so no calls are dropped. Archive their voicemail and call history per your retention policy. Cloud phone systems make this a five-minute admin task rather than a service call to a phone vendor. Contact Vivant to learn how our platform simplifies both onboarding and offboarding for your growing team.
