Ever feel that more and more people are not listening to their voicemails? The hustle and bustle of life has gotten so hectic, a businessperson could save 30 minutes a day by erasing every voicemail left during the day! But, if you’re a small-business entrepreneur, erasing is not an option! You need to make sure you’re in contact with your clients and that means listening and responding to your messages. It’s absolutely crucial. Continue reading
Do you remember your first job with a desk and phone? Did you have to use a company sponsored software program? Most likely the customer relationship management (CRM) program provided was unnecessarily complex.
With bulky, complex customer tracking software, the volume of data that needs to be entered, let alone accurately, can be daunting. Hundreds of fields such as time of call, notes, sales representative name, etc., etc., often require hours of data entry and additional upkeep time in order to have a viable system. If mistakes are made during the data capture period, they can significantly impact the customer. Some mistakes even lead to loss of the sale.
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. Continue reading
What does your company do when a customer doesn’t want to leave a message? Losing potential touch points with customers can come with a high cost. By using features included in a cloud phone system, you can overcome some of the barriers keeping you from communicating with your customers.
According to recent studies, nearly 4 out of 5 people calling into a small business who get voice mail do not leave a message. And it’s likely that this trend will only increase in the era of text and instant messaging features built into smart-phones.
The most expensive part of owning a fax machine is the ink toner. But there are other reasons than simply cost to go digital with your inbound faxes. From liability to organization to increased sales, using a “Cloud-based” fax solution is easy and will add to your bottom line in ways you never expected.
Here we list the top five reasons to stop using the hissing, beeping, sometimes not-even-working fax hardware.
When I was a geek kid growing up my friends and I would experiment with VoIP phones like the early PingTels and program them to do all sorts of things we would now take for granted as standard PBX features. There was a lot invested by the telco industry in making replacements for PBX phones with “smart desk phones” that would have touch screens and video cameras. It was thought back then that cell phone use would be for personal reasons and business calls would take place on a desktop phone.
But the exact opposite happened.
We all know healthcare is changing. Between “Obama Care” and Medicare reform, the healthcare services industry has never seen such a shakeup in the way business is done. That also means that the healthcare service providers – from dentists to physicians to surgeons – are changing the way they do business.
Looking like a local is the new black
In order for many small businesses to appear “bigger” than they are, there are plenty of reasons for SMBs to have toll free phone numbers. What’s often overlooked however, is that there are a number of products and services where customers like the idea of a local presence from small businesses.
It still amazes me to this day how most Adwords advertisers will spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month on Adwords and not track the phone calls that arise from those ads.
An abbreviation for Interactive Voice Response, an IVR system is the automated greeting we hear when we call many businesses. You know, “Press 1 for sales, 2 for support…”
While it’s a relatively old technology, the emergence of all things “in the Cloud” mean small businesses (and I mean really small businesses – the kind that fit onto 4 wheels) can have an IVR system that’s super cheap and very easy to set-up and change.
