4 Things that Will Keep Your Customers Waiting On Hold

  Pretty much the last thing that anybody wants when they call into a business is to sit on hold. Be that as it may, callers can reach a level of acceptance, for a few specific reasons, and decide it is worth their time to put it on speaker and wait it out until they can speak with you.   1. Billing Issues One of the foremost reasons that people are willing to stay on hold is not part of any strategy—it’s just one of those things that isn’t much of a choice for your customers. People are very likely to call in for a billing question or problem, and though they may not be excited about it, they’ll probably accept being on hold if necessary.   2. Great Customer Service If your business provides excellent customer service, and people expect that when they contact you, then they’ll usually be …

Make Business Known for What You Sell

How to Make Your Business Known for What You Sell

  One of the greatest ways to make sure customers come to you when they need a certain product is to project the impression that you are the go-to provider or purveyor of whatever that thing is. This post discusses the reasoning for this strategy and how to do it.   You might not be the authority, yet. This strategy basically uses hype to persuade customers to come to you for a given product, and you don’t necessarily have to be known for whatever it is you’re selling. The idea is to “act as if” your business is known for something so that people will naturally be more drawn to you when they need that product or service.   What does it look like in practice? The point is not to be deceptive but to create a buzz for this item or service which you are indeed already producing. It …

Top Reasons Why Businesses Are Switching to Virtual Phone Systems

Phone service is still very important to small businesses as it is still one of the preferred methods of customers to reach out to a business. All kinds of companies are now reevaluating their phone systems to see how it can be improved with current technology and hopefully find more economical options at the same time. Virtual phone service can offer a lot to a business on this front, and in most cases, it is a lot more efficient than traditional systems. Cost-Effectiveness The big phone carriers who have been around for a long time, like AT&T or Comcast, had a pretty strong grip on the small business market until recently; however, small businesses now are starting to wake up to the idea of using a virtual phone service that completely satisfies their needs at a fraction of the cost they were paying with one of the big carriers. A …

5 Reasons Your Customers Will Accept a Higher Price

One of the most unfortunate mistakes that business owners make is setting their price point too low, even when they know that their product is worth more. They do this because they don’t believe people are willing to pay more than standard market value for something; however, there are a few things that actually will make them comfortable paying a little extra because these qualities make it worthwhile to them. 1. Great Customer Service It doesn’t matter what your business sells; people are always going to choose the company that gives them great customer support over the one that doesn’t put much emphasis on taking care of its customers. Many times, customers will even settle for a product that isn’t quite as good as the other, if they can get excellent customer service with the lesser-quality product. And if it comes down to a choice between two products which are …

The 5 Most Commonly Misused Phone System Terms

  The first step in any kind of communication is the definition of terms. Not only is it invaluable to effective communication, but in the same way, understanding industry terms such as phone system jargon and even just the names of the hardware, functions, and other elements is essential to choosing the right virtual phone system, as well as setting it up and using it. All of the terms you’ll find in this post will clarify what it all means, once and for all.   1. Port You probably have an idea in your mind of what this word means, and what you think is very likely completely wrong. This word marks one of the most pervasive misunderstandings among telecom users. Once more from the cheap seats… Port: A full and complete transfer of phone service for a phone number from one carrier, to a different carrier. After the porting …

Email Reputation: What It is, and Why It Matters

  Email reputation is kind of a buzzword recently, and it’s a good thing because this is something that all professionals and business owners should give some thought to. Email is a form of communication that we all thought would go away as text messaging and social media platforms became ubiquitous for both casual and professional communication. To our surprise, email continued to survive and to be consistently used today, still, especially for work of course. That’s why even today, we need to consider our email reputation, and here is what that entails.   What is Email Reputation? You can probably guess what this means if you don’t already know, and you would probably be right. Your email reputation is the sum of various elements of your conduct when using email, such as the length of time you take to reply to someone, the quality of your writing, your professionalism, …

Why a Talkroute Phone System Doesn’t Require a Mobile App

When you start your search for a new virtual phone system, you’ll quickly discover that there are numerous options to choose from. What you have to carefully consider is what type of virtual phone system you want because there are a few categories, and the needs of your particular business will determine which type will work best for you. Some of these services are based entirely in an app you install on your smartphone; but others like Talkroute are not tied down to an app. Here’s a bit of a deeper explanation. Types of Phone Services Many people, when they begin to do some research to find out what kinds of phone service providers are out there, they might go in thinking that there are simply regular phone services and virtual services. They come away realizing that there are many iterations of virtual providers. Here are three basic types of …

Turn Disgruntled Customer Loyal

4 Simple Steps to Turn a Disgruntled Customer into a Loyal One

  To pull a one-eighty with a customer who is already upset for one reason or another takes a measure of skill and a great deal of patience, but this is the epitome of truly taking care of a customer. We could break down the process into a semantic, long-winded sequence of steps, but to be effective, these 4 basic steps are really all you need.   1. Forget About Winning The first idea you have to expel from your mind, when you have a conflict with a customer, is winning. Every business owner understands this intellectually, but in that moment when someone is filling your ear with all the reasons that they’ve been wronged by the business, it can quickly become a useless battle of opposing arguments on either side. Those of us with strong personalities have a switch that gets flipped as soon as someone, even a customer, …

Managing Forwarding Phones

5 Steps for Managing Your Forwarding Phones

  The phones that you use to answer business calls are the most essential element and most valuable point-of-contact you have with your customers. Most of the time, you can pretty much set it and forget it, but then there are also those times when changes need to be made. That’s when you need a system that makes it easy to change up the configuration while keeping the calls coming in without interruption. These steps will give you a simple roadmap for managing your forwarding phones as part of a virtual phone system.   1. Make sure your phones are in excellent working order. Find out every person, or every phone that will be taking calls, and then do some testing. Go through each phone that will be on the forwarding list with your virtual system; then, do a series of tests to make sure there will be no conflicts …

4 Tips for Emergency Preparedness in Your Office

  The motto, “Be prepared for anything,” extends beyond writing everything you can think of into your bylaws. As a business owner, you also need to be ready for practical emergencies which have the potential to cause massive problems for your business if you’re not ready for them, not to mention the harm to your employees. Increase your emergency readiness with these practical suggestions.   1. First Aid Any office has to have a first aid kit somewhere in the facility, but it’s good to go even a step further and provide a first aid kit for each employee because you never know when mishaps will occur. It’s not just an act of goodwill for your staff; keeping sufficient first aid materials around for everybody might prevent the need for a trip to the ER or a Workman’s Comp claim.   2. Post Emergency Procedures & Contacts Of course this …