Dead Space in Your Phone System and How to Eliminate It

  Though it’s not usually one of your highest priorities when you’re setting up your automated phone menu, this is something you might want to give some attention to. Your service provider will likely have a system with the preset options which you can easily implement; however, there are multiple spots where it’s possible to end up with dead air in the audio. What follows below reveals those potential trouble spots and how you can fix them.   Speech of the Voice Actor This is a problem that you can easily solve, but you need to identify the points in your recorded audio files when it is happening. You’re probably going to have a few audio recordings on your phone menu for callers to tell them what number to press or to give directions, hours of operation, etc. Whether you have a professional voice actor recording this audio or you’re …

Is YouTube a Viable Platform for Small Business?

It’s a new age of small business, and the ways in which entrepreneurs approach it are changing right along with it. You may think, if you’re a traditional thinker, that something like a YouTube channel is a ridiculous platform on which to build a business model, but as YouTubers would say, you’re just a hater. And they would be right. Can it be a Real Business? Here’s the thing: It is absolutely a viable platform for business, and those who are reigning in the cash cow currently provided by YouTube are throwing money in the bank with nearly zero overhead cost. The only reason that anyone can make any money through the platform is because the masses haven’t quite come around yet, to the idea that the money is there for the taking. It’s true that YouTube doesn’t monetize videos as heavily as they did in the recent past (for …

What to Do When You Get Bad Review

What to Do When You Get a Bad Review

  Even if you have an excellent product and fantastic customer service, someone will inevitably leave a bad review about your company at some point. It can be aggravating and concerning when this happens, but you can still diffuse any negative perception of your product or service and even turn it to your favor if you address it correctly.   Take a Step Back It’s important to remove your emotions from the equation right away so that you can assess and resolve the negative feedback before it has a chance to do any harm to your business’ reputation and image. Allow yourself to gain objectivity by looking at the bad review as if you were a person who knows nothing about your company. How much weight does the review hold? Does it even seem convincing or influential? It’s also really useful to carefully consider the person’s complaint, if what they …

4 Things You Didn’t Know a Virtual Phone System Could Do

  As virtual service providers proliferate more and more, many people are now aware that these systems are perfect for businesses; however, most have no idea what they are capable of. Here are a few of the most useful ways that you can put a virtual phone system to work for your business.   1. Screen Your Calls One of the most common complaints businesses have is the occasional or excess of marketing and robo-calls, which can be a drain on resources, as well as your staff’ anxiety. With a virtual system, you can pretty much eliminate those unwanted calls by adding an auto attendant, which is essentially a virtual receptionist. This feature will stop “robo-calls” in their tracks because they obviously can’t press a number to be connected. As for the more persistent marketing calls placed by humans, you may easily place their numbers on your blocked phone numbers …

Can a Business Owner Wear Too Many Hats?

  It’s a point of pride for business owners that they “wear a lot of different hats”, or have their “fingers in many pies” (insert your cliché of choice here). If you’re proficient at it and are able to manage everything, then more power to you, but it’s important to draw the line somewhere so that it doesn’t all fall apart.   Know Your Limits We all have our limits. It’s easy to delude ourselves through pride, ambition, or what-have-you and overstep our personal limitations, which can ultimately result in burnout and great harm to your company. Burnout can be difficult to identify when you’re suffering from it and take a lot of time to recover from, so it will be of great benefit to you and your company to take stock of your strengths, weaknesses, and especially your limitations at the first so that you can avoid burnout entirely …

Are There Uptime Issues with a Virtual Phone System?

  If you’re looking into a new phone system for your business, then the first thing you will probably want to know is if you need to worry about the service unexpectedly going down for any reason. Business owners especially have questions about this when trying a virtual provider for the first time. We’re going to address a few of these questions here.   Consider the Type of Virtual System Different virtual providers connect calls in a few different ways. The three main examples of these are those that connect calls strictly through your mobile phone’s carrier service through the cellular network; VoIP providers who use your on-site Internet connection; and the providers like Talkroute who connect calls using the networks of whatever phones you have—cell phone, landline, or other type of phone. The latter is the best type most of the time because your call connection will be as …

The Best Way to Handle Multiple Incoming Calls

  It would be nice if your business only received one call at a time, but that of course isn’t always the case. At times, you will inevitably get multiple calls coming in at the same time, meaning you’re going to need provisions in place to manage all of them so that no one hangs up before you can take care of them. The focus of this post is to give you a few ways to professionally handle all of those simultaneous calls.   Automated Reception Especially when you are working with minimal phone support staff, it’s important to have an automated system set up to field simultaneous calls as they come in. The best way to do this is to use a call menu, or auto attendant, that allows callers to press a number corresponding to the information they need, or to press a certain number to speak to …

5 Good Reasons to Ignore Cheap Phone Systems

  There are now more virtual phone service providers than there have ever been before, which presents an interesting problem overall, as well as a huge advantage for a business owner. The problem is that it takes business owners much more time and research to find the right phone service for their business because there are now dozens of providers to choose from, rather than just a few big traditional phone carriers. This explosion of virtual providers, unfortunately, comes with quite a few really cheap providers with terrible service who just want to grab a piece of the profit. The low cost for their services is tempting, but this is why you want to steer as clear as possible.   1. Unreliable Connection This is one of the most common complaints people have when using a phone service app or cheap virtual provider. One of the ways these providers keep …

When to Take or Ignore Advice for Your Business

When you’re starting a business or have been running one for a while, you can bet that people around you will make sure you know what they think about it. They may be family, friends, mentors, or colleagues, and no matter who they are, you need to make sure that you don’t take the wrong advice to heart. The following are a few questions that you should ask yourself before you take anyone’s advice about your business. Do They Understand What You Do? It’s really easy for someone to tell you how you should run your business, but unless they’re your partner, it’s not likely that they have an intimate knowledge of what your business actually does and how it works. The general advice they want to give you may not apply to you specifically at all. Does This Person Have Any Business Experience? When someone you know is offering …

3 Reasons Your Call Transfer Feature Isn’t Working

Live call transfer is a feature that is essential for many businesses, which makes it pretty scary for a business owner when it doesn’t seem to be working. Before you start to panic, consider these possible reasons that you aren’t able to transfer calls. 1. Incorrect Dialing Sequence Failure to transfer a call to another extension or employee within your business because you didn’t perform the correct dialing sequence doesn’t mean you’re stupid; it just means that you were either instructed to use the wrong sequence, or possibly that you didn’t even realize that you’ve been pressing the wrong buttons. Consult with your phone service provider, and make sure that they tell you explicitly what you need to do to initiate a call transfer. 2. DTMF Issue This is probably the most common reason that a transfer function fails, and it has nothing to do with user error. If you …