When you think of call screening, you likely imagine a feature that’s used be people at home trying to avoid calls from telemarketers or other folks they want to avoid. With the advent of caller ID, call screening is a feature that many people don’t even use. What many don’t realize is that there are still some great uses of call screening even in a world where you can see at a glance where a call is coming from. Not only that, but call screening can
A new report by marketing and research firm Criteo reveals that mobile apps grabbed the lion’s share of e-commerce transactions in 4Q’17 for retailers that have shopping apps. This is a big deal, as more and more retailers are seeing the advantage of having a dedicated mobile app to make things easier on shoppers. Some are even making a major push to make their apps commonplace, with retail giants like Wal-Mart pitching the app in stores and even adding scan-and-pay functionality that lets shoppers scan items as they pick them up to skip most of the hassle of checkout. Why
Regardless of the size of your business, proper marketing is essential if you want to be successful. Different generations have different wants and needs, however, so a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing usually isn’t the best way to reach your largest possible audience. If you want to make the biggest impact, you need to target your marketing efforts differently to different generations. This is the core concept behind generational marketing. By researching trends in different generations, your marketing team can more effectively develop strategies to promote your business and products. This differentiation improves the likelihood of your message getting out there
You’ve probably never considered how the way that you use your phone could influence the success of your business. After all, the two things seem so disconnected that there’s no reason to think that one might affect the other. As it turns out, though, there is actually a direct connection between how you use your phone and how successful your business is. Knowing how to identify and use this connection can mean the difference between a business that does better than you ever expected and one that just barely gets by. Before we get too far into how you can
This was the caption to a panel of the popular tech webcomic found at XKCD.com. Also, these are words that terrify everyone in the telecom business. It’s no secret that millennials are far more comfortable texting rather than calling. Even Gen X and Y often avoid calls in favor of the less intrusive SMS. So how did we get to this point, and what can we do to fix it? Or, does it even need to be fixed? If, like the character in the hat, you have five phone numbers and you’re not sure what they all do, rest assured
Networking is an important part of the business world. If you want to get things done and keep everything under budget, it’s essential that you have access to the people, tools and materials that you need to get the job done. If you don’t focus on business networking, you’re going to be quickly outpaced by those who do. That said, business networking is evolving. No longer is it about collecting business cards and keeping your rolodex up to date in case you need to reach a specific contact. Now it’s much more nuanced and offers many more opportunities to the
A lot of effort goes in to creating the professional image of a business. Some businesses prefer to be seen as casual and fun, while others are the epitome of businesslike and professional. These differences in approach are reflected in the company’s marketing efforts, logo designs and even the look of the office or storefront (or website). There’s one other aspect of a company’s professional image that many businesses forget about, though: How you answer the phone. It might seem like a small thing, but the way that you answer the phone at work can have a big impact on
As the holiday season approaches, many businesses are looking at ways to translate holiday shopping trends into sales. You’ve no doubt already seen the start of holiday advertising pushes, and may be planning your own push for your business. Everyone from huge corporations to little mom-and-pop shops tend to rake it in from Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so there’s good reason to get excited for your business when the holidays roll around. That said, there’s more to improving your business through holiday celebrations than just targeting Christmas and the other end-of-year holidays. Even small businesses can score some
Chances are, you had a specific goal or business vision in mind when you first set about starting your business. Over time, though, those initial goals have a way of getting lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of keeping a business running. They may grow outdated, or the company may simply outgrow them. Regardless, you can end up with a company that is focused on running (and possibly running well) but not really going anywhere because it lacks a central vision to drive it forward. With the dawning of a new year, it’s the perfect time to establish a
Letting employees work remotely is a great option for many businesses since it lets them hire the best people for the job regardless of physical location. Unfortunately, these virtual teams sometimes have trouble working cohesively because of differences in time zones, lack of direct contact and other iss ues that arise when people aren’t physically working together. This is part of the reason that some major corporations, including IBM and Yahoo!, have started phasing out virtual teams completely. Just because problems can arise doesn’t mean that they have to, though. If your business makes use of virtual teams, there are
As your business grows, you may be surprised at how much you are able to accomplish. This is especially true once your business has grown to the point that you’re starting to consider larger projects and initiatives that would have once seemed beyond your scope. Unfortunately, you might sometimes find that these new projects are still a little beyond what you can easily do alone. Sometimes the problem that you face with larger projects is a cost issue, or having enough workers to pull it off without hindering your day-to-day operations in the process. Regardless of your limitation, though, the
One of the most important things that a business can do is contribute to the community around it. This spirit of giving not only builds up the very community that supports the business, but also provides the business with some well-deserved public recognition. Businesses shouldn’t contribute to their communities just for the recognition, of course; it’s merely a positive side effect that comes from business leaders trying to do the right thing. Even though communities can use help any time of the year, the amount of help needed often grows significantly as the holidays creep closer. If you’re wondering how
The Phone.com Channel Partner Program (CPP) started in October 2010. The impetus was quite simple: Phone.com customers saw a reliable, cost effective, and forward-thinking solution for their voice communications needs and wanted to sell it to their clients and customers! Fast forward to today and the CPP has 360 members! These organizations represent Phone.com to their customers or clients and earn a commission for the revenues generated for as long as the customer is active with Phone.com. This results in a recurring revenue stream for our partners! In the initial stages of the program, it was expected that our successful
Millennials are often seen as being innovative and tech-savvy, so many in the business world expect them to be part of the next big wave of entrepreneurs. It makes sense, after all; millennials are already taking over for the baby boomers when it comes to things like property ownership, so it’s natural for them to take over for baby boomers in entrepreneurship as well. Surprisingly, though, that doesn’t seem to be happening. From the looks of things, however, it’s only a matter of time. Millennials and Entrepreneurship Millennials are 20-somethings and 30-somethings at the moment, and that portion of the
Communication is essential in business. This is especially true when you’re in a line of work where you take on individual clients. Regardless of the type of work that you do, your clients will have certain expectations that you need to meet. If you’re not able to effectively communicate with them, you might miss the mark entirely and either have to redo your work or lose the client completely. The big question is, what’s the best way to keep in touch with your clients? Some purists believe that the tried-and-true telephone is still by far the best option, while others
Time management is essential to being productive during the workday. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get distracted by the people and events surrounding you. That’s not even getting into the various distractions you’ll find online… have you ever fallen down a Wikipedia hole at work while trying to look something up? Even if you’re usually pretty productive, there are still likely a few ways that you can better manage your time while you’re on the clock. Sometimes, improving your time management skills is just a matter of becoming more aware of how you spend your time during the workday. In other
Once you’ve got it set up, you might not give much thought to your company’s phone system. After all, this is the age of the Internet… your phones may not even be the primary way that your customers connect with your business. That doesn’t mean that your phone system isn’t important, however; even with Facebook and email taking a role of prominence in business communications, people are still going to call when they need to get in touch with someone quickly. With that in mind, take a moment and think about what the user experience is when someone calls your
This is part 1 of a 2 part blog. You can read part 2 here. IP phones are becoming increasingly common these days. Not only are they popular for residential use, but they’re showing up more and more at businesses as well. VoIP services offer a lot of options that businesses can use, allowing business owners to take advantage of more features for less money. Of course, if you really want to get the most out of your VoIP service then you’ll want to pair it with an IP phone. What’s an IP Phone? Glad you asked! An IP phone
When you think of call screening, you likely imagine a feature that’s used be people at home trying to avoid calls from telemarketers or other folks they want to avoid. With the advent of caller ID, call screening is a feature that many people don’t even use. What many don’t realize is that there are still some great uses of call screening even in a world where you can see at a glance where a call is coming from. Not only that, but call screening can
A new report by marketing and research firm Criteo reveals that mobile apps grabbed the lion’s share of e-commerce transactions in 4Q’17 for retailers that have shopping apps. This is a big deal, as more and more retailers are seeing the advantage of having a dedicated mobile app to make things easier on shoppers. Some are even making a major push to make their apps commonplace, with retail giants like Wal-Mart pitching the app in stores and even adding scan-and-pay functionality that lets shoppers scan items as they pick them up to skip most of the hassle of checkout. Why
Regardless of the size of your business, proper marketing is essential if you want to be successful. Different generations have different wants and needs, however, so a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing usually isn’t the best way to reach your largest possible audience. If you want to make the biggest impact, you need to target your marketing efforts differently to different generations. This is the core concept behind generational marketing. By researching trends in different generations, your marketing team can more effectively develop strategies to promote your business and products. This differentiation improves the likelihood of your message getting out there
You’ve probably never considered how the way that you use your phone could influence the success of your business. After all, the two things seem so disconnected that there’s no reason to think that one might affect the other. As it turns out, though, there is actually a direct connection between how you use your phone and how successful your business is. Knowing how to identify and use this connection can mean the difference between a business that does better than you ever expected and one that just barely gets by. Before we get too far into how you can
This was the caption to a panel of the popular tech webcomic found at XKCD.com. Also, these are words that terrify everyone in the telecom business. It’s no secret that millennials are far more comfortable texting rather than calling. Even Gen X and Y often avoid calls in favor of the less intrusive SMS. So how did we get to this point, and what can we do to fix it? Or, does it even need to be fixed? If, like the character in the hat, you have five phone numbers and you’re not sure what they all do, rest assured
Networking is an important part of the business world. If you want to get things done and keep everything under budget, it’s essential that you have access to the people, tools and materials that you need to get the job done. If you don’t focus on business networking, you’re going to be quickly outpaced by those who do. That said, business networking is evolving. No longer is it about collecting business cards and keeping your rolodex up to date in case you need to reach a specific contact. Now it’s much more nuanced and offers many more opportunities to the
A lot of effort goes in to creating the professional image of a business. Some businesses prefer to be seen as casual and fun, while others are the epitome of businesslike and professional. These differences in approach are reflected in the company’s marketing efforts, logo designs and even the look of the office or storefront (or website). There’s one other aspect of a company’s professional image that many businesses forget about, though: How you answer the phone. It might seem like a small thing, but the way that you answer the phone at work can have a big impact on
As the holiday season approaches, many businesses are looking at ways to translate holiday shopping trends into sales. You’ve no doubt already seen the start of holiday advertising pushes, and may be planning your own push for your business. Everyone from huge corporations to little mom-and-pop shops tend to rake it in from Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so there’s good reason to get excited for your business when the holidays roll around. That said, there’s more to improving your business through holiday celebrations than just targeting Christmas and the other end-of-year holidays. Even small businesses can score some
Chances are, you had a specific goal or business vision in mind when you first set about starting your business. Over time, though, those initial goals have a way of getting lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of keeping a business running. They may grow outdated, or the company may simply outgrow them. Regardless, you can end up with a company that is focused on running (and possibly running well) but not really going anywhere because it lacks a central vision to drive it forward. With the dawning of a new year, it’s the perfect time to establish a
Letting employees work remotely is a great option for many businesses since it lets them hire the best people for the job regardless of physical location. Unfortunately, these virtual teams sometimes have trouble working cohesively because of differences in time zones, lack of direct contact and other iss ues that arise when people aren’t physically working together. This is part of the reason that some major corporations, including IBM and Yahoo!, have started phasing out virtual teams completely. Just because problems can arise doesn’t mean that they have to, though. If your business makes use of virtual teams, there are
As your business grows, you may be surprised at how much you are able to accomplish. This is especially true once your business has grown to the point that you’re starting to consider larger projects and initiatives that would have once seemed beyond your scope. Unfortunately, you might sometimes find that these new projects are still a little beyond what you can easily do alone. Sometimes the problem that you face with larger projects is a cost issue, or having enough workers to pull it off without hindering your day-to-day operations in the process. Regardless of your limitation, though, the
One of the most important things that a business can do is contribute to the community around it. This spirit of giving not only builds up the very community that supports the business, but also provides the business with some well-deserved public recognition. Businesses shouldn’t contribute to their communities just for the recognition, of course; it’s merely a positive side effect that comes from business leaders trying to do the right thing. Even though communities can use help any time of the year, the amount of help needed often grows significantly as the holidays creep closer. If you’re wondering how
The Phone.com Channel Partner Program (CPP) started in October 2010. The impetus was quite simple: Phone.com customers saw a reliable, cost effective, and forward-thinking solution for their voice communications needs and wanted to sell it to their clients and customers! Fast forward to today and the CPP has 360 members! These organizations represent Phone.com to their customers or clients and earn a commission for the revenues generated for as long as the customer is active with Phone.com. This results in a recurring revenue stream for our partners! In the initial stages of the program, it was expected that our successful
Millennials are often seen as being innovative and tech-savvy, so many in the business world expect them to be part of the next big wave of entrepreneurs. It makes sense, after all; millennials are already taking over for the baby boomers when it comes to things like property ownership, so it’s natural for them to take over for baby boomers in entrepreneurship as well. Surprisingly, though, that doesn’t seem to be happening. From the looks of things, however, it’s only a matter of time. Millennials and Entrepreneurship Millennials are 20-somethings and 30-somethings at the moment, and that portion of the
Communication is essential in business. This is especially true when you’re in a line of work where you take on individual clients. Regardless of the type of work that you do, your clients will have certain expectations that you need to meet. If you’re not able to effectively communicate with them, you might miss the mark entirely and either have to redo your work or lose the client completely. The big question is, what’s the best way to keep in touch with your clients? Some purists believe that the tried-and-true telephone is still by far the best option, while others
Time management is essential to being productive during the workday. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get distracted by the people and events surrounding you. That’s not even getting into the various distractions you’ll find online… have you ever fallen down a Wikipedia hole at work while trying to look something up? Even if you’re usually pretty productive, there are still likely a few ways that you can better manage your time while you’re on the clock. Sometimes, improving your time management skills is just a matter of becoming more aware of how you spend your time during the workday. In other
Once you’ve got it set up, you might not give much thought to your company’s phone system. After all, this is the age of the Internet… your phones may not even be the primary way that your customers connect with your business. That doesn’t mean that your phone system isn’t important, however; even with Facebook and email taking a role of prominence in business communications, people are still going to call when they need to get in touch with someone quickly. With that in mind, take a moment and think about what the user experience is when someone calls your
This is part 1 of a 2 part blog. You can read part 2 here. IP phones are becoming increasingly common these days. Not only are they popular for residential use, but they’re showing up more and more at businesses as well. VoIP services offer a lot of options that businesses can use, allowing business owners to take advantage of more features for less money. Of course, if you really want to get the most out of your VoIP service then you’ll want to pair it with an IP phone. What’s an IP Phone? Glad you asked! An IP phone
