Does a Virtual Phone System Have to Use VoIP?

  Virtual phone systems for business are steadily becoming more popular and more accepted, but they are still vastly misunderstood. This article is an introductory attempt to dispel some of the misconceptions that people have about virtual phone services. When you, as a business, set out to find the perfect virtual system, you might assume that you will be looking only at VoIP services, but today there are more options than that available.   Defining the Terms One of the main issues seems to be that people use the terms, “virtual” and “VoIP” almost interchangeably. To a consumer, the perceived definition of a thing tends to take precedence over the actual definition, which is why many businesses think a virtual phone service is automatically a VoIP service. That’s why it’s important to understand what “VoIP” actually means.   What is VoIP? VoIP literally stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol. When …

What to Do When Your Business Outgrows Your Cell Phone

  If you’re starting a new business today, then chances are, you’re running it from your cell phone. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and it can work for you for a long time. As your business begins to grow, however, it will probably demand some kind of a system that is capable of managing your calls professionally and efficiently, no matter how many calls you’re getting. Here’s how you can handle your success as your company exceeds the capacity of your cell phone.   Make Sure Callers Don’t Get a Busy Signal As your business gets bigger and call volume goes up, the first thing you need to be concerned about is making sure that you don’t miss any of those calls. When all of your business calls are coming into your cell phone and multiple calls are coming in at once, some of those calls are going …

How to Pick the Right Phone Number for Your Business

How important is your business’ phone number? Outside of your website, it’s typically the first point-of-contact with your business for your customers, so… pretty important. Sometimes you just end up with a random number to serve as your main line, but if you have an opportunity to choose your number, then these criteria can help you to choose one that fits, practically and aesthetically. Local or Toll Free The first decision you’re faced with when picking a new business number is whether to use a number with a local or toll free area code. There are a couple of factors to consider here. Foremost among them is deciding if you want to give people the impression that you’re kind of a hometown company, for which local area codes are good; or if you would rather convey a larger-scale, national feel, in which case you’ll probably want a toll free number. …

Stop Paying Per Minute for Your Virtual Phone Number

Your virtual phone service shouldn’t cause you stress. It should give you peace of mind by supporting all of your business phone calls, every day, without forcing you to count the minutes you’re using to make sure you don’t get overcharged. There are a lot of virtual phone services out there today, and many of them charge for usage by the minute, which can quickly add up to excessive cost. It may be time to consider using a service that does not charge per minute, so you can start saving money. Reduce Your Cost by “Refinancing” In a sense, you can refinance your virtual phone service by switching to a provider that will give you all of the call time that you need for a better rate. Paying by the minute can get extremely costly if your business is growing and the call volume is steadily going up, and that’s …

Does Your Phone System Need a Welcome Greeting?

  Welcome greetings are a pretty standard feature used by businesses to make a good first impression on their callers. It’s the perfect way to accomplish that, but it doesn’t mean that you should automatically and always use one. There are a few reasons why you may want to skip the welcome greeting altogether.   Speed of Service When it comes to serving customers, we know that every aspect of their experience counts towards sending them away happy, including one of the customer’s most valued qualities, which we know as speed of service. Doing away with the welcome greeting helps you to give them that speed because instead of adding a delay, albeit a small one, you let the customer go straight through to what they called for in the first place—a friendly voice on the other end of the line.   We Tend to Be Verbose Using a welcome …

IVR vs. Direct Dial: What Works Better for You?

Call routing for a business is essentially very simple, right? A customer calls your number, and then they’re connected with a representative from your company. That’s pretty much all it is when you boil it down, but there are a few questions that you should ask yourself when designing your phone system. 1. Do Callers Need Options to Choose from? Using an IVR is massively popular with small businesses because it evenly distributes calls among staff members, helps callers get to the right person or department, and filters out telemarketing bots, among other things. It’s very effective for managing calls and makes you sound more professional at the same time; so, you really just have to ask yourself if you want your customers to wait a few more seconds before they’re connected with someone, or if ringing straight to your phones fits your business better. 2. Does Direct-Dial Make Everyone’s …

4 Call Forwarding Strategies to Manage Calls Faster

  We’re all familiar with how useful call forwarding can be for handling business calls. You can give customers one central phone number to call, and then send the call to pretty much anywhere you want, depending on how good the system you’re using is. No matter how capable your system is, though, it’s really only as good as your forwarding strategy. How you’re routing calls can make all the difference.   1. Ringing All of Your Phones Simultaneously The classic method of forwarding calls to your phones by ringing them all at the same time is effective because calls are more likely to be answered quickly. It’s uncomplicated and direct—someone calls in, and somebody will answer.   2. Ring Each Phone in a Specific Order There are usually going to be members of your staff who take calls more often than others because that’s their role, and those are …

3 Ways to Make Sure You Never Miss a Voicemail

  We all make it a top priority to never miss a phone call, but it can be just as detrimental to miss a voicemail. If a voicemail gets overlooked or accidentally deleted, you never know what opportunity was lost with that message. That’s why you’ve got to have some protocol and sensible habits in place to make absolutely sure that you receive every message your customers leave for you.   1. Don’t Rely on Consumer Voicemail Services It’s pretty risky to only utilize the voice mailbox that comes with your cell phone, or the one that comes with any of your phones, for that matter. Your phone may malfunction and delete all of your messages for no apparent reason; the caller might get the dreaded, “mailbox is full” automated response—and there are a number of other things that can cause you to miss messages when using the internal voicemail …

How to Create the Perfect Welcome Greeting

Some of the simplest and most common elements of your business’ phone system can be the most nuanced and difficult to make right. The welcome greeting is usually the first thing a caller will hear, making it a pretty important impression on calling customers. There are a few things to keep in mind when creating and setting this greeting. 1. Keep it Brief Depending on how the structure of your system is laid out, you may either have it set to ring your phones right away when someone dials your main business number, or to bring them to some kind of menu first. If routing calls to a menu, your “welcome” message may just be tacked onto the beginning of the main menu prompt which describes to the caller what number they need to press to be connected to the correct department—but even then, it should be brief. Your callers …

4 Ways You Can Mess Up Your Phone Tree

  Even though the whole idea behind a phone tree, or auto attendant, for your phone system is to simplify things and minimize errors, you can still mess it up before you even start using it; that is—when you set it up. This post will point out all of the common mistakes that people make when they’re setting up the phone tree for their phone system.   1. Too Many Options People just don’t want to stick it out if you have a ton of different menu selections, especially if their option ends up being the last one in the list. Try to keep your phone tree down to as few options to choose from as possible. If you have a situation where you need one option for each of your employees, and there are a lot of them, then it’s best to create an actual extension for them. Then, …