3 Ways to Configure Any Business Phone System

  One of the things that makes a virtual phone system great is that it is so versatile and adaptable, no matter how many or what kind of phones your business will be using. In this post, you’ll find 3 specific configurations that you can use to make sure every business call that comes in will be served quickly and be directed to the correct person, every time.   1. Single Cell Phone If you are currently running your small business from your cell phone, rest assured that there are a multitude of other business owners who are doing the exact same thing. Using a virtual system like Talkroute is the perfect solution for that scenario, and your customers will never know that you are taking every call on a single cell phone. Here’s how it works: Add a call menu It doesn’t matter if you have one business phone …

Make It Anywhere Small Business

Can You Make It Anywhere as a Small Business?

  At some particular point in your life, you decide that you are going to be an entrepreneur. You thought about it for a long time, maybe discarded the idea a few times, and then one day, you settle it within yourself that you are going to start a business. At that time, one of the thoughts that may cross your mind is that you need to relocate to some special place where people start businesses. Is that a valid question? And if so, where would that place be?   The Question of Location To begin with, this question is probably irrelevant, but there are business fields that may benefit from operating in a certain area. This would apply to businesses such as local farming supply (not to put too fine a point on it), a recording studio that needs to be close to where the musicians live, or really …

4 Reasons Virtual Phone Systems Are Better Than Traditional

  Communications technology is moving into the future, allowing businesses capabilities that haven’t been possible with a traditional office phone system. Furthermore, it isn’t just the new features that make virtual systems superior to traditional; there are improvements to infrastructure, speed, diversification, and more. These are a few of the elements that greatly benefit businesses of all kinds.   1. Easier to Manage Making adjustments to the settings and/or functionality of your office phone system, in the past, could be a huge hassle. If you wanted to add a phone as a forwarding number, change the number of rings, add music for callers on hold, or pretty much any other adjustment like this, then you might have to call your tech person or possibly contact your service provider to make the changes. When you have a virtual phone system, on the other hand, you can quickly and easily make any …

Why You Should Be Using Twitter for Your Small Business

Yes, you should be tweeting about your business. Even though you may have zero interest in Twitter, there is no questioning the amount of influence it has on our culture today, in every capacity. If you aren’t sure how to use it effectively, then you might want to start looking into it. Customers Will Engage with You on Twitter If you’re not familiar with it already, the key to making Twitter work for you is engagement. As far as your business is concerned, it doesn’t matter a whole lot how many people are following your business on Twitter. The number of people who are actively engaging with you on the platform is way more important. If you’re utilizing it properly, then you’ll get comments, questions, and direct messages from the public, which is really what you want because this amounts to social proof. People Are Lazy Yes, you could argue …

4 Actionable Steps to Avoid Starting Your Day Late

  Even the most professional people can have trouble starting their day on time. It typically stems from a couple of wrong moves right at the beginning, causing a domino effect that can set back your entire day. By correcting those things from the time you wake up, it’s quite possible to begin every day like clockwork.   1. Start Thinking About Tomorrow, Today When you’re finishing up for the day, you’re most likely putting work behind you and out of your mind. That’s actually really healthy, but before you hang it up for the day, take 20 or 30 minutes to go over the next day’s tasks and responsibilities, at least for the first portion of the day. That way, you can anticipate when you realistically need to start, while also minimizing surprises.   2. Learn How to Say No Speaking of those surprises, a lot of them have …

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 …