Category Archive

  For both businesses and the general public, there are a variety of modern communication methods that utilize the internet. You probably use a few of these methods yourself for your job and your home life. With that in mind, here are a few ways that technology is rapidly transforming the way you communicate information. Email Replacements   Email systems have been around for decades and have a variety of issues that have persisted for just as long. This is a problem for both your business and personal use as dealing with these issues can easily chew up your time and put you at risk. Unsolicited advertising in the form of spam email messages is common, and may well form a significant amount of internet message traffic at this point. Malware in the form of computer viruses and other malicious executables embedded into email attachments are also a constant threat …

  As a business owner using a Virtual Phone System, you are reaping the benefits of the professional quality service of a business system combined with the ease and cost-effectiveness of a single phone in your hand. But you may face some challenges using this system well. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems were never intended for home or small business service, after all, and consequently, users may face hiccups when using these systems that way. Fortunately, recent changes to VoIP are addressing many of those problems. For the first time, Talkroute is offering a VoIP-based service with WebRTC because we believe the technology is finally stable enough to offer a reliable internet-based call connection. Here’s why we’re using WebRTC to go beyond old-school VoIP and why that can make your business communications faster, stronger, and simpler.   The Challenges of VoIP   VoIP does many things well. Without it, …

  “Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.” Ever heard that line from a pleasant-if-robotic voice when you were calling a company? You may ignore the message after several repetitions, but there’s a very good reason that companies are recording your calls. And it may be about more than the quality assurance they claim it is. Savvy business owners and entrepreneurs know that recording phone calls is imperative for creating increasingly greater customer experiences.   What’s the Big Deal About Call Recording, Anyway?   Many people think call recording is illegal, and others wonder why companies announce that they are recording calls. While you might feel betrayed if you learned that a partner or close friend was recording your calls without your knowledge, why does it matter if a faceless company does so? And what does call recording really help a business learn about its customers? Is Call …

  Once you get your business phone system solid and running just the way you want it to for the company, you probably aren’t going to have too much go wrong with it, but things do happen from time to time, so it’s good to know what you’re getting into when that occurs. We’re going to address most of the issues that you will run into in this post and provide some real solutions that you can employ to resolve it. With this knowledge, you may not ever have to call your service provider or carrier because it’s possible to solve it yourself. Keep in mind that this applies to a virtual phone system, although much of this can also be applied to conventional systems, as well.   Forwarding Phones Not Ringing   This can have a variety of different causes, and like many similar problems, it can either be …

Business phone systems are becoming increasingly advanced & complex thanks to constantly evolving communication technology. These new systems provide excellent alternatives to the traditional phone systems that have been in place for decades. As with most new technologies, however, misconceptions, myths, and legends have cropped up around these new communication systems, and consequently, some companies are growing wary of investing in the latest phone system technology. Many professionals seem to think that their old phone system worked just fine. They think the company should call in the repair team one more time to keep it alive instead of buying something new for the office. Is this the right approach to corporate communication technology, though? Can virtual phone systems really stand up to the old-school, traditional systems that we know? Let’s look at the five most common misconceptions about business phone systems, old and new, and then consider the right approach …

  1. Trim the Fat & Lower Your Cost Have you considered switching from a traditional phone company to a virtual phone system? A virtual phone service like Talkroute is most likely going to be much less expensive than using one of the main phone carriers that you may be using right now. Many of these suggestions are of course for businesses that run out of a separate office, but you can use most of the same principles by applying them to your home business, too. Business phone systems can get pricey very quickly, but thankfully the traditional providers are not the only option you have at your disposal. Switching to a virtual phone service provider can save a business a lot of money by eliminating the need for additional phone hardware and network equipment because you can simply use the phones you already have. Traditional providers also tend to …

  Google Voice is one of those services that was created by a very large company who found and employed an elite team of very smart people, who then took a great idea built by GrandCentral, put the power and resources of Google behind it, and made it even better. What they really did was to design Google Voice in such a way that it was appealing and useful for a much bigger market. GrandCentral, the phone management service which Google bought out for themselves back in 2007, really wasn’t much more than a basic carrier with a lot of infrastructure and massive inventory of phone numbers. Google took that to use as the backbone of their new Voice app, but what they created with it was much more than what GrandCentral had. One of the problems with the Google Voice app, though, is that it only has basic features …

Toll-free phone numbers have been around for quite a long time now, and their value to businesses remains even until today. There are a few benefits to having a toll-free number, most notably the fact that anyone can call it without assuming any charges, but it’s also a simple way to give your business a national presence. On top of that, it works great to turn it into a vanity number to make it easier for customers to remember and identify your business, especially when it has the original (800) area code. 800 numbers have come a long way to become what they are today. All the way from collect calling, to expensive, regional-based numbers offered during the time when AT&T still monopolized the telecom industry, to the affordable, nationwide toll-free service with which we are familiar today. In this article, we’ll explore that extensive history, its gradual development over …