Here’s Why You Need a Live Answering Service for Your Small Business

On August 30, 2021
10:28 am
Filed under Product, Tips and Tricks

Running a small business is difficult, to say the least. Did you know that, according to Forbes, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and 30% fail in their second year of operation? Those are pretty significant numbers, and they’re hard to ignore. So how do you ensure you don’t become another failure statistic? There are, of course, myriad reasons why small businesses fail. Insufficient capital, unsuccessful marketing initiatives, an unclear business model – all things that are important to be aware of, of course. Businesses can also run into trouble once they hit their stride when communication

If your time is short Illegal robocalls are a nuisance and a vehicle for bad actors to commit fraud. The telecommunications industry has developed a framework called STIR/SHAKEN to verify the authenticity of caller ID numbers. The deadline to implement these protocols is June 30, 2021. Phone.com complies with these requirements. The change will have no customer impact except for hopefully reducing the number of illegally spoofed caller-IDs. Some carriers may also flag calls as “Trusted.” Background Illegal robocalls are a nuisance and a vehicle for bad actors to commit fraud. The recent surge in robocalls is due

Phone.com provides business communications services and local phone numbers to customers in Canada. We also offer Canadian phone numbers to US-based customers that would like to have a local presence in Canada. Phone.com is the modern, work-from-anywhere solution for today’s agile, mobile, and always-on entrepreneurs and growing businesses based in the US and Canada. Are you looking for a business communications service to keep you connected from anywhere on any device? Phone.com offers all of the modern features of a big-enterprise phone system but is affordable and easy to use. In just minutes, you can take your business to the

What is a Softphone? Depending on the size and the industry of your business, you might be swimming in a sea of desk phones. As life becomes more mobile and digital, especially after the pandemic, the desk phone’s days are numbered. Companies, especially small- to mid-sized businesses, are ditching clunky telephones in favor of mobile communications. Here’s where the answer to “what is a softphone?” comes to save the day. Softphones are basically software-based phones. They connect calls via a computer or mobile phone, relying on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. By using VoIP, you can place voice

Productivity Hack: What Is the “Do Not Disturb” Feature on Your Phone? The pandemic impacted everyone’s productivity, but a significant number of people relied on technology to keep their key performance indicators high. As an example, special features to disable mobile and office phones’ distracting rings and notifications became useful. You’re in the right place if you’re asking the question, “What is the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature on my phone?” In a nutshell, the “Do Not Disturb” mode sends business calls directly to voicemail. Top providers can set up sophisticated virtual IP phone systems that forward the calls to other

The Benefits of International Business Phone Numbers Small and midsize companies in the U.S. can now expand worldwide with just one click. International business phone numbers have helped thousands of organizations establish a virtual presence in multiple countries, making incoming calls easier for their customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. In a nutshell, international business phone numbers allow companies in the U.S. to own local numbers in different countries, saving callers from the hassles of traditional international long-distance calls. For example, if a U.S.-based company has international business calling and a customer base in Australia, any resident could call a local

Client-less UCaaS solution enables agility, mobility and collaboration for crystal-clear audio and high-definition video communications, lauded for agility, security and user experience Newark, NJ (December 7, 2020) — Phone.com today announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named Phone.com Video Meeting Service a 2020 TMCnet Video Conferencing Excellence Award winner. Phone.com Video Meetings deliver seamless collaboration from anywhere and on any device. Users can easily conduct video conferences, send instant messages to colleagues, as well as share screens and documents with ease. As one of the best and most innovative platforms, Phone.com’s Video Meeting Service offers the most

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created in 1996 to modernize the flow of healthcare information. It stipulates how all personal data maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft. It also addresses limitations on healthcare insurance coverage. All healthcare and healthcare insurance industries are required to comply with HIPAA guidelines and can expect to be audited by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), an organization within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). HIPAA compliance should be taken very seriously, as violations can carry civil or even

Introducing our new video conferencing and screen sharing solution. Now you can collaborate from anywhere using your personal computer. Phone.com’s new first-class audio, video, and web conferencing solution empowers communication with clear and effective high-quality audio and video capabilities, from anywhere. HD video conferencing with Phone.com is the next best thing to being in person. You can: Conduct video meetings Meet for as long as you want Share your computer screen and documents Use your phone or computer audio Invite participants with a personal meeting room link Start or join a meeting with no downloads and nothing

VoIP (voice over IP) is packed with high-tech perks. Many of them are designed to make your life easier. But just as many were created specifically to serve your customers. And one them is a magical little feature called Click-to-Call. It works like this: your VoIP provider gives you a bit of code to embed on your website and voilà, a button appears that quickly connects customers to your business. The catch is that they enter their number and your business calls them. It’s kind of amazing. From preventing callers getting stuck in a phone maze to just making their

businessman using dial-by-name directory

In business, to have success and longevity in the ever-crowded, ever-expanding marketplace, it helps to have razor-sharp instincts. On the other hand, when your instincts may be not as honed, there is another resource just as essential if not more so: statistics. When thinking about your customer base and customer experience, it’s important to collect as much data as possible. Luckily some of that is readily available on the internet. Here are a few stats that caught our eye: According to an American Express Global Customer Service Barometer in 2017, more than half of Americans have stopped

A key feature of the Phone.com service is Call Forwarding. Given that lots of our customers are small business owners or sole proprietors, this feature gives you the power of control – to direct inbound calls to single or multiple phone numbers, including your home, office, cell phones, etc., anywhere in the world. With your brand new Phone.com number, you officially don’t have to use your personal number anymore! This instantly gives your business the big-brand look and feel. If you need any help with the forwarding feature, take a look at our support page. And if you get really

It seems like we all live through video these days. Whether it’s Snapchat or Instagram, Vimeo or YouTube, video dominates all the facets of our lives. It certainly helps, of course, having a high quality camera ready to go right in your pocket. Video has also revolutionized the ever-changing workplace. Potential employees can interview for jobs over video, businesses can connect with remote employees with the click of a button, company-wide meetings can take place on a screen, and so many more solutions. At Phone.com, we’ve added a video component to our communication platform as a premium feature for our

Here at Phone.com we’re not only proud to deliver top notch business class phone service to a diverse group of small businesses, we’re also able to legally protect the sensitive information handled by medical professionals with our HIPAA compliant coverage in our standard features. If you’re unfamiliar with that acronym or new to the VoIP industry, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was signed into law in 1996 with the chief aim at providing accountability for health insurance companies and patients’ information. With the VoIP revolution, small, medium and large medical companies are able to cut costs by not having to

At the Phone.com headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, we’re lucky to be in such a wonderful coworking space like Launch Pad surrounded by entrepreneurs, tech companies, and myriad other small businesses that make up the community. One such entrepreneur started using our service but had a bit of a problem figuring out the Call Forwarding feature with his account. Since it’s one of the first things you have to do after signing up, we decided it’d be a perfect blog post. Depending on which plan you have, call forwarding may affect your pool of minutes. For unlimited minutes, you should

Because of the sensitive information handled by a medical practice and the compliance requirements of HIPAA and HITECH, you have to be pretty picky when choosing new technologies for your office. This obligation is especially true when dealing with communication methods, since you certainly don’t want to accidentally expose confidential patient data. As a result, many medical offices are slow to adopt new technology. If your phone system could use an overhaul, however, it might be time to consider switching to a VoIP service instead. There are several benefits to choosing VoIP over other options, including some that are vitally

SMS, more commonly referred to as text messaging, is a major part of modern life. In fact, it’s such a big part of both our personal and business lives that it’s easy to overlook SMS as a feature. Once upon a time, SMS was magical… the ability to send a text message from a phone was like nothing that had ever been seen before. These days, though, SMS is so integrated with the phone experience that the only time we really notice it is when there’s something wrong with a SMS app and our messages just aren’t sending. There’s more

VoIP services can be a huge boon to a small business. Not only does VoIP offer a flexibility that you won’t find with landline phone systems, but the pricing for small business VoIP services also beats just about any other small business phone service you might try. Here at Phone.com, for instance, you can start with a base plan as low as $9.99 per month if you’re a sole proprietor or other small business that needs limited monthly minutes; given all of the features that are included with your account, that’s a price that’s hard to beat. How does small