9 Effective Ways to Shorten Your Work Meetings

    If your meetings regularly exceed their scheduled time, or they just generally seem to take too long, then this post is for you. Long, unproductive meetings are extremely common, but you can get them running like a swiss watch if you put these strategies into practice.   1. Only invite people who need to be there. There is a tendency to invite all department heads, or even the entire staff, to meetings with a specific agenda. Make an attempt to only invite the people who are directly involved with the project or agenda, and everyone else can remain productive.   2. Come with a written plan, and stick to it. Many team leaders come into a meeting planning to discuss general topics, instead of specific points. Whomever is leading the meeting must have clear items that will be presented to the group, and what is to be accomplished. …

How to Run Multiple Businesses from a Single Phone

When you’re not familiar with virtual phone systems, the idea of running more than one business from a single phone might seem like a really bad idea, if it’s even possible at all. But it is more than possible; it actually works excellently if you have a virtual phone system like Talkroute. What you’ll see in this post is a breakdown of the steps you can take for exactly how to set it up in a very short amount of time, with an explanation of the features that you will have at your disposal. Open a Talkroute Account To get started, just go to talkroute.com/sign-up and sign up for a new account. Don’t worry; there is a free trial period, so you don’t have to commit right away. If you do decide to take advantage of the trial, then you can select a temporary, working phone number which you can …

How You Can Guard Against Phone Number Spoofing

Caller ID spoofing (for lack of a better term, apparently) is simply masking the outgoing caller ID with a number other than the real one, which is technically not illegal unless you’re doing it for unlawful purposes.   The reason it’s not illegal is because there actually are legitimate purposes for spoofing, such as businesses who want to show only one phone number for multiple lines, as part of a PBX system, or victims of domestic abuse who want to hide their number for safety reasons. It is definitely illegal, however, if someone spoofs a phone number to impersonate a bank, for example, in order to solicit your account information. Though it can be difficult to track down the person responsible, there is some action you can take to protect yourself. When you suspect a caller to be a malicious spoofer Use common sense. Caller ID spoofers can sometimes be …

6 Things You May Not Know About Your Customers

    To understand your customers takes diligence. You have to listen to their feedback, as well as look at data about their behavior. In the end, you need to know a few foundational elements of what makes customers tick, and here are a few of them.   1. They usually don’t speak up. Most people remain silent about their experience with your business, whether it’s good or terrible. This is unfortunate because it makes it more difficult to gauge how customers feel about your service, but as a rule of thumb, you can bet that if one person gives you negative feedback, there are more who share their experience and aren’t saying so.   2. They always expect great service. Customers are a demanding bunch. They are hardly satisfied with halfway-decent service; they come to you with high expectations.   3. They will remember how you treated them. If …

8 Barriers to Entry Every Startup Should Know

It’s not easy to open a business in a competitive field. In fact, if it is too easy, you should question whether it’s worthwhile, in the first place, because you may end up in an overcrowded space. The things that stop competitors from entering an industry are the things that let the established businesses keep their piece of the pie. Every startup should be aware that they will probably face barriers to entry, and these are 8 of them. 1. Startup Capital You always have some startup cost, but many industries necessitate extensive capital, including, but not limited to, infrastructure, equipment, permits & licenses, or a minimum number of employees. It is important to anticipate potential additional costs to open your business, before you get started. 2. Technical Knowledge Base Some businesses cannot easily break into an industry because of the high level of technical knowledge that it demands. Take …

How to Keep Your Office Phones on During an Outage

No phone network is perfect. No matter what type of phone system you have in your office, there is always the chance of an outage, which is why you can’t put all your eggs into one basket, as it were. Here we’ll go over the two major types of business phone systems, the shortcomings of each, and how you can keep your calls coming in, no matter what happens. Conventional Office Phone System If your office has a traditional phone system that works over the PSTN (the old-school, wired telephone network), then you’re fairly safe. It’s for this reason that Talkroute connects calls over the PSTN, to make sure that users always have a reliable connection. As we all know, the old landline in the house (if you still have one) will work even during a power outage. It still works when the power is out because that landline is …

Why Doesn’t My Company Name Show on Caller ID?

    This article will give you an overview of how the company name is set for outgoing caller ID, including a description of the process and why, sometimes, it doesn’t show up for the person you are calling.   Our Talkroute engineers collaborated on this post to provide valuable insight into how caller ID works, and what you can do to make sure your caller ID name is accurate.   CNAM (Caller ID Name) Firstly, the CNAM is the name that shows up on the receiving party’s caller ID when you call a number. When your call comes in on the phone of the person you dialed, their carrier retrieves the CNAM record, and displays your name on the receiving phone’s caller ID.   The CNAM has a 15-character limit, so a name exceeding this length will be cut off in the displayed caller ID.   The Neustar Database …

10 Steps to Handle a Tough Customer on the Phone

    1. Listen. This has to be one of the most crucial aspects of handling difficult callers, and customers in general. When you really listen to what they are trying to tell you, you are simultaneously showing concern and gaining insight into the issue they are having, which helps you to find a solution. Also avoid the impulse to talk over them, even if you have good news.   2. Provide validation to the caller. Many times, the person screaming at you on the phone just you to recognize that they are upset for a good reason. Many customer service professionals have a tendency to talk down to the customer because they don’t understand what is happening, and this is wrong. Instead of just telling them to “calm down”, try saying, “You’re right—this is a problem, and we are going to find a solution.”   3. Don’t react emotionally. …

6 Things to Consider Before You Start a Business

    Odds are, if you are starting a new business, then you have been planning this for a while and have considered very carefully what it will entail. Just in case, here is a checklist of things you should be thinking about as you prepare to open your brand new business.   1. Beware of a low barrier to entry. As the saying goes, “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it,” and sometimes, everyone is doing it. If you find that it’s a little too easy to get into an industry, then it probably means that it’s already over-saturated with too many competitors.   It should give you pause because some barrier of entry to an industry or field of business is actually a good thing. Barriers to entry, such as access to materials, brand loyalty, or strict government regulations—these things limit the number of competitors so …

4 Ways to Simplify How You Do Business

    Business owners are always looking for new ways of streamlining everything they do, to save time, money, and energy. Here, we explore a few ways to simplify your business and eliminate clutter, in favor of potency.   1. Offer fewer options. Take the obvious example of a restaurant. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, then you have already seen how this can work.   Many restaurants aim to impress their customers by offering an extensive menu, with all kinds of dishes; however, limiting the menu to 10-15, or even fewer dishes of better quality, is usually more palatable to diners.   You can employ this same strategy at your own business by limiting your products, features, or options, thereby making it more manageable to customers.   2. Focus on doing one thing, very well.   If it appears that you do a lot of different …