Traveling internationally can be a major problem for small business owners when they find that using a cell phone can incur enormous roaming charges. In fact, even if you do not answer your phone, you may pay $1-$2 per minute for every call that rings when you are roaming overseas!

Phone.com has a way to help business people save substantial money on phone costs when traveling.

The idea is simple. Before you board the plane, you forward your cell phone calls to your Phone.com business telephone number (follow instructions from your cell phone provider for that. For example – click here to see how to do it on an AT&T cell phone). When you reach the destination country, you purchase a low cost “pay as you go” SIM card and place that in your (unlocked) cell phone or rent a cheap phone with the SIM card.

At your convenience from your hotel room, you set up your Phone.com extension using the web-based Phone.com Control Panel to forward calls to your new local number that comes with the SIM card.

Boom! There is no roaming charge and, in many countries, no cost for incoming calls either.

As for outbound calling, you can dial out of your phone and pay whatever the local SIM card d deal offers but the better way is to obtain a Global Number from Phone.com (we have numbers for over 40 countries) this will allow you to place calls using your own Phone.com Caller ID by dialing only your Global Number (a local call) and setting up menus to dial all your contacts.

You can also use our Phone.com Mobile VoIP App on your Smart Phone (if you have one) and dial out using your Hotel Wi-Fi with no International or roaming charges.

As you land back in the US, replace the SIM card and undo the cell phone call forwarding and you are done!

You can also set up schedules to make sure calls do not come in at undesirable hours in case you travel far off from your normal time zone.

Economically-minded users can make all that happen before they fly, and then cancel when they return. There are no long terms contracts at Phone.com.

So what can be simpler or more economical than that? Nothing! Remember: Phone.com customer service agents are always happy to help you with any questions.

Step 1: In your Phone.com control panel navigate to “Call Info” and then to “Manage Spam Callers List”

Step 2: Click the “Add A Number To Block” button.

Step 3: You will need to check the “Starts With” check box. You can then enter “+1325” which will block all calls from numbers beginning with 325. The note field is for your reference. Once you have completed that, click the “Add” button.

I told you it was easy. If you have any questions whatsoever regarding this new feature, our awesome customer service representatives are here to help 24 hours a day and 7 day a week!

Conference calls seem to be a necessary part of business today.  In days of yore calls consisted of 2 phones, 1 on each end, sometimes there’d be a speakerphone or two involved but that was it.  When a group of people had to talk they’d have to meet face to face, this was prior to the Phone.com Communicator app of course.  Now though when face to face isn’t necessary but getting a group together on a call is we just use a conference calling bridge.

Phone.com offers the best bridge in the business.  Features like 500 seats on the call, flexible moderator controls and one that’s really nice if you have regular calls, a permanent conferencing number.  That static bridge means you can save the number into your address book and not have to ever dial it again.

I’ve included two pictures, one of our participant controls and one of the moderator controls.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to give us a shout on Facebook or Twitter.  We’re here to listen and help.

Don’t get me wrong, every penny counts when running a small business and I don’t suggest anyone should spend those pennies without a need but there’s no reason to use a service that announces that it’s free, making your company look cheap.  Every Phone.com extension gets it’s own conference call number or bridge as it’s commonly referred to.  I’m always ecstatic to host calls because I get to use my Phone.com bridge, it’s a bit of a pride thing now, knowing I’m not using some free service.  The really sad thing was these companies can definitely afford a proper bridge.

If you use Phone.com service then make sure to check out our HD Conferencing.  You can access it from the box on the left of your extensions control panel right under the Settings option. If you have any questions message us on Facebook or Twitter.

What I learned today is that almost all the wired IP phones we sell have ethernet pass through. Meaning you can daisy chain your hardware. If you only have 1 ethernet wire at your desk you can plug it into your Phone.com IP phone then run another ethernet cable to your computer.

This may seem very simple or even silly if you have WiFi at your office but I’ve been uploading many gigabytes of family video’s today to the cloud and if I would have been hardwired to the internet it probably would have taken much less time.

Out of curiosity, if you have WiFi at your office do you still plug your laptop into the ethernet or just go wireless? Let me know on Facebook or Twitter.

I know some of you already use this feature, all kinds of businesses do but it was my first time being in this situation and being able to use it.  I’m a one person operation in my small office, so I’ve never wanted to transfer a call before.

By the way, I decided to test this out a little more and when you’re on your cell phone and want to transfer a call to any other extension dial *2 and that extension.  It places your call on hold and rings the extension.  Once the new line is picked up you can hang up your cell phone.  I’m going to be using this a lot more I think.  I inevitably get calls on my cell phone when I’m on my way to my office and when walk into my office now I’ll transfer them my desk phone.  I’m happy to report in my non scientific testing I was able to transfer incoming calls between my Phone.com Bria iPhone app, our Mobile Office app for Android (I didn’t test it on BlackBerry yet), a desktop IP phone, the desktop Communicator and a call to my personal cell phone number that Phone.com forwards to.  

Are you using incoming in-call transfers?  Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.  

I had the opportunity to speak with one of our awesome customers, John Savidge of Montron LLC. His company specializes in advertising campaigns via electronic media (radio and television) in the education and the medical, legal and automotive industries. They use Phone.com phone numbers in their advertisements and gauge the success of a campaign by the number of calls they receive.

Prior to the release of call notifications, John and his team would send a weekly report to their clients listing the calls that were received in response to a particular ad campaign. Clients would then call anyone back that they may have missed. The problem with this model is that any missed calls are missed leads and when addressed on a weekly basis, are likely very cold.

With call notifications, John’s clients now receive an instant notification of a call and have the ability to call that lead back while it’s still hot. John’s clients are happy, John is happy and Phone.com is happy. I call that a win-win-win!

Please check out our new call notification feature in your telephone number and extension settings. I saved the best part for last. It’s totally FREE! ALL of our customers can take advantage of it today.

I’m happy to report that by having my voicemail transcribed by Phone.com and emailed to me I was able to read them and then respond as needed when they called my Phone.com number. No more paying for roaming to listen to voicemail when I’m outside the US. I was able to read my message, I could text that person back or call them directly from my email. This saved me a lot of time and money but more importantly, it made my life just that little bit easier.

Voicemail Transcription from Phone.com costs 25¢/message for human transcription and for our less expensive automated system it’s just $1.50/month. This is one of those services that can really ease some stress and if it’s out of your range every month you should

Chris is a photographer…

He has gigs across the U.S. but his local telephone number tells another story…It says, “I’m limited.”

“I may not be able to serve your event, because I’m all the way over here….and you’re way over there.”

When the economy is strong and you have no choice but to turn local customers away, it’s not something you worry about. But when markets shrink, and you need to capture every lead – you need greater reach within the market.

Chris noticed that his call volume began to drop, and all but fell silent the further potential customers were from his immediate area code. Even though he was willing to travel, was his local telephone number giving the wrong perception? Was he sending the wrong message to customers before he ever met them? Being a savvy entrepreneur that he is, Chris called his friend Jeb at Phone.com and asked how a toll free number may impact his business.

Toll free numbers are not limited to geographical locations. They represent a well-established business, and they allow a greater reach. Now when Chris hands someone his business card, he knows he is not immediately dismissed based on location, and in today’s competitive world this may give him an advantage. Just as a customer has freedom to reach companies outside their local community via the web, so too companies should have the freedom to reach beyond their geographical location and appeal to out-of-the-area customers. And in today’s have-it-your-way world, Phone.com offers Vanity Toll Free numbers that can spell out your business name within the number.

Try it Yourself with a Coupon Code

Try our vanity toll free option to customize your toll free number today, and use either coupon code when you check out: “FreeVanity” or “Free800″.

1. Create a Mobile Extension in your Phone.com control panel. Then go into the settings for the new extension and click the words View Server Details that’s on the right side.
2. Download the Bria app from the Apple iTunes store to your iPhone or iPod Touch (I’ll continue to just refer to both the iPhone and iPod Touch as just the iPhone).
3. Open the newly downloaded Bria app on your iPhone and scroll down to the Phone.com settings and tap on it.

   

4. Once you’re in the settings page
   • A. Fill in the Display with your phone number
   • B. Input your Username and Password found on the Phone.com Control Panel when you tap on View Server Details in the Settings. The password is case sensitive.

• Click Done and then Register at the top. You may have to hit the Accounts button at the top left of the app to go back 1 level but then click the little arrow to the right of Phone.com and click Register.

  

You should be logged in and ready to make calls. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter anytime.