Phone Systems for Care Homes & Home Care Providers

Feature by feature: why SwitchboardFREE works for care homes and home care providers

Every SwitchboardFREE account comes with over 40 features. These are the ones that make the biggest difference to care homes and home care providers, and why.

Time-of-day routing

Someone has to answer the phone at 3am, and it should be the senior on duty or the manager on call, not a phone ringing in an empty office. Time-of-day routing sends night and weekend calls to whoever is on call, and back to the office in the morning, without anyone switching it over.

DepartmentsStandard & Unlimited plans

Families ringing about a relative, GPs and pharmacies ringing about medication, and job applicants all reach the same number. With departments, "press 1 for a resident or client, press 2 for the manager, press 3 for jobs" sends each to the right person and keeps recruitment calls off the floor.

VoIP desk phones

In a care home, the person nearest the phone is often with a resident. A cordless VoIP handset can be carried around the unit or kept at the nurses' station, alongside desk phones in the office, and they arrive set up and plug into your broadband.

Calls from your business number

Community carers often need to ring clients to say they are running late. Calls made from the SwitchboardFREE app show the agency's number, so carers' personal mobiles stay private and clients ring the agency back, even after a carer has left.

Ring groups

A call from a worried relative should not ring one empty office and give up. Ring groups can ring the nurses' station, the office and the manager's mobile at once, or one after another, so whoever is free can pick up.

Voicemail to email

Messages from families, social workers and pharmacies arrive by email as an audio file with a written transcript. The office can read them, pass them to the right nurse or carer, and keep a copy with the resident's or client's notes.

Divert calls to your mobile

Registered managers and home care coordinators are often out at assessments, reviews and meetings. Calls can ring the SwitchboardFREE app on their mobile or be diverted to any UK mobile, so the on-call manager takes the service's number with them.

Missed call alerts

If nobody can get to the phone, missed call alerts email the caller's number the moment the call is missed. The office can ring a relative straight back, rather than finding out hours later that they called.

Music on holdStandard & Unlimited plans

While staff fetch the nurse in charge or check how a resident has slept, callers hear music on hold instead of silence. Families know they are still connected and have not been forgotten.

Call recordingPaid add-on

When a family raises a concern or a professional gives instructions about care, a record of the call can help. The call recording add-on records all or some calls to play back and download; tell callers when calls are recorded and include it in your privacy notice.

Call logs

Call logs show every call with its time, the number dialled, the duration and the outcome. If a family says they could not get through, or you need to show when a GP's surgery rang, the record is there.

Business continuity

If a power cut or flood puts the office phones out of action, you can redirect every call to staff mobiles or another site in minutes. Families and professionals can still reach the home while the problem is fixed.