Business phone
Your phone system, inside the customer record
A real business line with a menu, ring groups, voicemail, and recording. Click to dial, ring your cell, and every call lands on the account it belongs to. No separate phone vendor and no CRM to sync it into.
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Deep dive
The phone system is the part of the CRM everyone skips
Most of this industry runs on the phone. The quote starts on the phone, the extra unit for Saturday is asked for on the phone, the complaint arrives on the phone. Then the software everyone buys treats calls as something that happened somewhere else: a separate phone vendor, a separate call log, and a salesperson who remembers the conversation or does not.
PortaPro runs the line itself. The number is provisioned in Settings, the menu and the ring groups are yours to edit, and when a call comes in the caller is matched to a customer before you pick up. When it ends you pick an outcome and write a sentence, and that call is on the account forever: direction, duration, who took it, what was agreed, and the recording if you keep them. Six months later, when the customer says nobody told them about the overage, the answer is on their record rather than in somebody's memory.
It also means the small stuff stops leaking. A missed call is texted back automatically from the same number, so the caller who would have dialed your competitor next gets an answer instead. A voicemail is transcribed and readable without playing it. And because each person chooses to ring in the browser, on their cell, or both, none of this depends on anyone sitting at a desk.
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How it works
Number, menu, groups, and a record of every call
Four screens of setup, and after that the phone system maintains the customer history for you.
- 1
Get the number
Provision a number in your area code, or port the one on your trucks and your signs. Numbers can be your main line, a direct line for sales with its own routing, or an outside number you keep on the account for reference. Each one either follows your org-wide call flow or overrides it with its own.
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- 2
Decide what a caller hears
Write the menu in plain text and map each keypress to a destination: a ring group, a voicemail box, a submenu, or a forward to a cell phone. PortaPro speaks the prompt, so changing the menu is editing a sentence, not rebooking a voice actor. Press 0 for the after-hours emergency pump-out is one line of configuration.
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- 3
Decide who it rings, and where
Group people the way the office actually works: dispatch, sales, billing. Each group rings all at once, in sequence, or longest-idle-first, and each member rings in the browser, on their cell, or both. A group that nobody answers falls through to voicemail or forwards on, so a call never just ends.
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- 4
Answer, and have it write itself down
An incoming call opens with the customer already matched, so you know who it is before you say hello. Click a number anywhere in PortaPro to dial it. When the call ends you set an outcome and type a line about it, and the whole thing files itself on the customer record next to their jobs, quotes, and invoices.
After hours
The line knows what time it is
Set your open hours once, per day, and the call flow changes on its own. During business hours the menu answers and the groups ring. After hours the same number can forward straight to the owner's cell, or take a message, without anyone remembering to flip a switch on Friday afternoon.
Saturday mornings are their own hours, Sunday can be closed, and the emergency option in the menu still reaches a real phone the whole time.
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Recording and voicemail
On when you want it, with your consent line and your retention
Turn recording on and you write the announcement callers hear and choose how long recordings are kept. Voicemail is transcribed, emailed, and attached to the customer, so a message can be read instead of played.
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Common questions
Get Started
The call that built the job should live on the job.
A real business line, built into PortaPro.
Get started in under 2 minutes.