Sadly, unexpected disasters can strike your area and business in numerous ways. While there’s no way to completely prepare for every type of disaster, having contingency plans and needed tools readily available can help you navigate through tough times.

Part of a disaster plan should address how you’ll communicate with your customers, clients, and employees. It may not be feasible to individually call each member of your team or expect team members to have access to their normal work environment. Instead, you may need to set up a communication system that can be accessed by employees once they reach safety. Including a virtual phone system with automated attendant, call forwarding, and hunt group features into your disaster plan can minimize service disruptions. Read on…

Do you remember your first job with a desk and phone? Did you have to use a company sponsored software program? Most likely the CRM they provided you made you angry every single day. Let me tell you about my last CRM experience.

As a writer for a large ad agency, interviews with small businesses were scheduled by a team of customer service representatives. They assigned me interviews at specific times when I’d need to phone the business owner to chat about their website copy.

The screen included date, time of call, notes section, sales representative name – you know, about 100 things for the representative to mess up. And mess up they did. At least a few mistakes were made with every single call that significantly impacted the customer – some mistakes almost lost the sale.

For one, they typically forgot to enter the time zone correctly. Other times, notes didn’t add specifics like who to speak to. Not only did the company look bad, I looked bad. So, we’ll give you two reasons to eliminate CRM software for good:

CRMs are expensive
For the cost of installing, training and implementing a CRM, you should consider a social phone system instead. Keep in mind most CRMs are canned and can’t be updated or changed as your company needs changes – which just means more hassle to use other programs.

Employees hate CRMs
As if constant mistakes weren’t enough, the limiting options of boxes, save features and constant updates frustrated more than a few folks. Should we mention that every time two users were in the same screen it crashed?

If you’re finally ready to ditch your CRM, a social phone system is a great substitute. All information stays in one place but allows users to interact with each other, as well.

Using a call log silo system, social phone systems allow each employee to see the actions, entries and log of others without interfering.  It’s easy to know who called at what time and see who took the call internally.  These details, like time zones of the call origination, cut down on most of the CRM box work – saving employees time and frustration.

When you have a minute, check them out to see if you can finally eliminate your CRM software for good.

We know you have lots of choices when it comes to choosing a virtual phone provider for your small business, but only Halloo combines the sales and marketing power of social media with an easy-to-use phone system that’s built specifically for your needs. Not convinced? Here are some of our more popular features that will not only make your work life less stressful, but also help you track and keep customers happy and coming back to your business again and again.

Bring a Social Media State of Mind to Your Virtual Office

Halloo is the first social phone system ever created. What does this mean exactly? You can get all of your employees on the same page in a few simple steps. With Halloo, you can share and take notes, respond to live calls instantly, and pull up past conversations during current calls. Everything is organized, accounted for, and easy to navigate through Halloo.

Make a Note of It

Did that customer just call you ten minutes ago and drop the call?

Imagine conducting and tracking business calls anytime and anywhere. With Halloo as your secret weapon, you can get organized and keep tabs on your multiple clients, see how you’ve interacted with them before, and nurture your existing relationship.

Halloo’s many features allow you to keep all your business contacts, calls, messages, and notes in one place. It’s easy to pull up information, reroute calls, and make notes all through a collaborative workflow.

Simple, Hassle-Free Set-Up

Now you can take business calls anywhere, anytime and still keep track of them. Halloo can route any calls to your existing mobile, office, or home phone instantly. An added bonus:  You don’t need any special equipment or a specialist to come and install anything! It’s all done through our easy-to-use site.

Come check out Halloo for yourself and see why everyone is talking!

The idea of making changes in something that already works well, like a phone system, is often scary. But when it comes to social phone service from Halloo, it’s a commitment that’s well worth making.

Read on…

Image Credit: Intherabbithole.com

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