How to Port a Phone Number from Verizon to Talkroute

Porting your phone number out of Verizon is fairly painless. When you’re ready to port your Verizon or Verizon Wireless number to Talkroute, they will oblige and release the number as long as you provide all the correct information. In this article, we will outline the steps you will need to take to transfer your Verizon number to Talkroute, including all the documentation you will have to produce. 1. Gather pertinent information for the number you’re porting. Before you even get started, it’s a good idea to put together all the information that you can, that is associated with your phone number. Start with your most recent phone bill, which you will need to submit to your Talkroute porting agent when you put in the port request. Then, call Verizon and ask them for your CSR, or Customer Service Report (this is not required, but it’s very good to have …

4 Expert Tips for Moms with a Home Business

Moms can be some of the most tenacious and determined people of all, so it’s no surprise that many of them decide to take on the ambitious task of starting a home business. The Mom/CEO position is not for the faint of heart. You have to know beforehand what you’re getting into, you have to plan well for it, and you will have to get creative to find ways to maintain organization throughout. Women are doing it every day, though, and it’s an entirely achievable and worthy venture. The following are a few pieces of advice with insight from women who understand the plight of moms working from home. 1. “The best revenge is the take-home pay.” —Cheryl Demas Those who work from home understand that it is just as demanding as a conventional business, but your friends and family tend to think that you’re kind of just fooling around …

How to Port a Number from Google Voice to Talkroute

  So you’ve found Talkroute and you’re ready to take the leap from Google Voice because you finally realized that Talkroute is way more awesome. Good for you. That’s how we know that we have the smartest customers.   This article will walk you through the steps you need to follow when porting your Google Voice number to Talkroute. Don’t worry—as these things go, porting a number from GV is simpler and quicker than most. Here’s what to do:   1. Unlock your GV number. This step is unique to GV, and if you don’t do it, the port will be rejected for sure. You can unlock your GV number by following these simple instructions from Google’s support page:   https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1316844?hl=en   Google will charge you a $3 fee, after which you’re free to port away your number.   2. Take a screenshot of your GV account page. Documentation is …

Telephone Terminology: Virtual Phone System Terms

Many of the terms associated with telephony are self-explanatory and familiar, but occasionally you’ll hear one that you’re not quite sure of, which is why we’ve compiled a short list of commonly used phone system terms. If you’re already a Talkroute user, this will also help you understand your system. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you’re wondering about a term that isn’t listed here. Forwarding Phone Number As part of a virtual phone system such as Talkroute, your forwarding numbers are all the phones to which calls are routed. When calls come into the main line, they are routed to the forwarding numbers—these are the phones that will actually ring. Virtual Phone Number or Talkroute Phone Number Your main business line with a Talkroute account is your virtual number, otherwise referred to as your Talkroute number. You may have multiple Talkroute numbers on a single account, …

How to Create Enticing Email Marketing Campaigns

    We all have a pretty good idea of what email marketing is because pretty much everybody has received this kind of email. A successful campaign makes the recipient feel valued, provides useful information to them, and compels them to act.   Personalize it as much as possible. When you’re sending a large volume of emails to many contacts at once, the tendency is to create a generic-sounding sales pitch that most people will ignore as soon as they realize what it is.   This is what you want to avoid. Wherever possible, it helps to include a piece of information that is specific to the individual recipient, such as their company name, some detail of a recent transaction, or you could comment on how long they have been a customer.   Avoid interruption-based advertising. As with any other interruption-based advertisement, such as a TV commercial, it becomes a …

An Old-School Idea that Could Transform Small Businesses

    It seems there used to be a certain ideal people had about doing business—maybe there were many ideals—but the one entrepreneurial imperative that always captures my imagination is the one that drove entrepreneurs serve their customers without cutting corners.   New small business owners are also on to something good, but the old-fashioned guys and gals from decades ago believed in building something to last. Now we’re all about building it fast, and as much of it as possible.   Of course there is a lot of money to be made and I won’t knock the hustle, but in the interest of old-school values, to the new wave of would-be tycoons I have to say: We can do better.   Consumer Durables There was this term, “consumer durables” that was used in the field of economics to describe something that consumers only had to buy once and be …

Is a Virtual Phone Number the Same as a Standard Number?

When you first hear about virtual phone numbers, you might be a little apprehensive about using them for your business because it seems as if this is an entirely different kind of number, but it actually works just the same, and in some ways better than a number you would get from a phone company. A virtual number is not a soft phone number, it is not a VoIP number, and it is even more versatile than a conventional number. A virtual number works just like the numbers you’re used to. When you say, “virtual number”, it sounds like it’s not quite a real number, or that there’s something strange about it, but this is not the case. You receive calls in the same way, and when someone calls your virtual number, they will be instantly connected to you from anywhere, as you would expect. They can also be local …

Divert Calls to One Platform by Consolidating Your Phone Numbers

  As your small business grows, one thing that can become hard to manage is your phone numbers. You may only have one or two main business lines in the beginning, but as you gain more customers, hire more employees, or open stores in new locations, more phone lines become necessary to handle the call volume.   Is the cost of expansion becoming too high? It’s a wonderful thing when you begin to experience growth and success, but the problem is that so many phone lines can get really expensive, and really complicated.   Traditional service providers will charge you hundreds, even thousands of dollars to manage all of your business’ phone numbers. You can use Talkroute to consolidate all of your phone numbers into one place, and not only that—you can manage all of them from your control panel.   Gather all your numbers into one, centralized platform. Consolidating …

Are You in the Wrong Business? These Symptoms Will Help You Decide

    Is your business making you miserable? Does success seem to elude you? Well, that could mean that you need to keep fighting the good fight, or it could mean that you should consider a new line of work.   Consider the following, and if this sounds familiar to you, it might be a sign that you’re in the wrong business.   You hate going to work every day. A lot of people hate their jobs right? But the difference for a business owner is that you are not working for anyone else (except for your customers, of course), and the whole point of being your own boss is to work how, when, and where you want to work.   When you have this kind of freedom, and you still hate going to work every day, then there’s a good chance you’re in the wrong business.   It’s difficult …

User Experience 101: A Philosophy of Simplicity

There is a subtle element of design which cannot be stressed enough and is absolutely necessary to creating a positive interaction with your customers, and that is user experience. Everybody’s talking about UX now, but good designers have understood its importance long before the term was ever coined. What does this mean for business owners? It means a lot because if you want to keep your customers, they have to be able to easily navigate your website, mobile app, or whatever platform it is. Allow users to seamlessly perform tasks. What does a good UX feel like? It might be best to first ask, What does a bad UX feel like?Quality UX design allows the user to perform an operation seamlessly. If they are hindered, frustrated, or confused by the process required to perform the desired operation, then that’s bad design—and it’s really that simple. The difficult part is engineering …