What phone system does a transport dispatch office need?

The short answer: a dispatch office phone system needs to get every call to someone who can answer it, wherever they are. For most small hauliers and distributors, that means a cloud-based VoIP system with call routing, hunt groups and mobile apps. It should run over a broadband line you have checked for call quality. It should also keep the number your customers and drivers already know.

This guide is for owners, operations managers and transport managers at haulage, logistics and distribution firms in Meath, Cavan, Westmeath, Louth and Dublin. It covers phones and calls in the transport office. It doesn’t cover tachograph, transport management or warehouse software.

What should a dispatch office phone system do?

Calls to a transport office rarely wait. A customer wants a delivery time, a driver has a problem at a drop, or a supplier needs to confirm a collection. Your phones should help with three jobs:

• Getting each call to the right person or team, first time.
• Letting staff answer from the office, the yard or home.
• Showing you call activity, so missed calls don’t slip past unnoticed.

An older phone system on the wall can struggle with all three. Adding an extension or changing how calls ring often means waiting for a specialist engineer. Older handsets also get harder to replace.

How should calls reach the right person?

Start by writing down who calls you and who should answer. Most transport offices have a few clear groups: customers, drivers, suppliers and accounts. A VoIP system can then handle calls in several ways:

• An auto attendant, such as “press 1 for bookings, press 2 for accounts”.
• Hunt groups and simultaneous ringing, so several people can pick up a booking call.
• Call transfer and call parking, so whoever answers can pass the call on quickly.
• Voicemail to email, so messages arrive in an inbox instead of waiting on one handset.

Keep the menu short. A driver ringing from a lay-by wants a person, not four options. You could give drivers a direct number for the transport desk instead.

Phones for the yard, the road and home

Transport staff don’t stay at one desk. With desk phones, cordless handsets and apps, the same business number can follow people around:

• Desk phones for the dispatch and accounts team.
• Cordless handsets for staff who move between the office, the warehouse and the yard.
• Mobile and desktop apps for transport managers who start early, finish late or work from home.

Drivers need a different plan. The Road Safety Authority lists holding a mobile phone while driving as a penalty-point offence. Its mobile phone campaign also calls phone use the biggest cause of driver distraction. So don’t build your dispatch office phone system around drivers answering on the move. Send urgent calls to the office team, and let drivers return calls once they have stopped safely.

Is your broadband ready for a dispatch office phone system?

VoIP carries calls over your internet connection. Call quality depends on that line and on the network inside the building. Before you switch, check these points:

• The upload speed as well as the download, because every call sends audio both ways.
• Wi-Fi coverage in the yard and warehouse, if staff will take calls on the mobile app there.
• A separate guest network for visiting drivers, so their phones stay off the business network.
• What happens to calls during a power cut or a broadband fault.

The mobile app helps with that last point. If the office line drops, staff with the app can still make and take business calls on their phones, as long as they have a suitable internet connection. You could also add a backup broadband line from a second provider.

Early starts, late finishes and changes

Dispatch often opens before the working day starts and closes after the evening loads go out. Decide where calls should go at each stage of the day. Options include a hunt group for the early shift, the duty manager’s mobile app, or voicemail to email once the office closes.

Plan who makes changes, too. With us, you raise a new user or a call-routing change with our helpdesk. It runs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, and after-hours emergency support costs extra. So agree routine changes, such as a new rota, during office hours.

Can you keep your existing number?

In most cases, yes. The industry calls this number porting. Your customers and drivers keep dialling the number they know, and calls arrive on the new system. Pick a switch-over date away from your busiest week. On the day, test incoming calls, the menu and voicemail before staff go home.

How Sweeney Computer Services can help

Oliver Sweeney founded the company in 1985. Today we support more than 50 businesses and more than 10 schools from Hurdlestown, Kells, Co. Meath. Our VoIP business phones start from €17 per user per month excl. VAT. That includes unlimited UK and Ireland calls, mobile and desktop apps, voicemail to email, call-routing features and ongoing support. We supply handsets separately.

When we set up a dispatch office phone system, we review your current setup and design the call routing. We also plan the number transfer and configure users, handsets, voicemail and call groups. Before installing, we check your network and internet connection. We can look after your IT, network and phones together, so you have one team to contact when something goes wrong. See our IT support for transport and logistics firms and our Wi-Fi and networking services.

For managed IT, Silver starts from €45 and Gold from €70 per user per month excl. VAT. We charge Microsoft 365 licences separately.