8 Employees That Will Live Their Best Work-Life with VoIP

On May 15, 2019
3:04 pm
Filed under Tips and Tricks

They may drive you crazy sometimes but let’s face it: you kind of love your coworkers. (You know you do!) And it takes all types to really get a business off the ground, then keep it running like clockwork. VoIP (also known as “voice over IP”, pronounced voyp; which basically means phone service over the internet) is brimming with features to suit all of them. Even the ones never at their desks. The ones that run from fax machines (and voicemails!) like they’re on fire. The goofy ones. The frugal ones. The don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy ones. The nerdy ones. (Oops! That’s

It can be one of the biggest blunders of the business call, eliciting sighs, eye-rolls, and universal irritation. It’s the call transfer—and it has a bad reputation for a reason. If you do it right, it can help your customers and leave a lasting, positive impression. But if you do it wrong—and many of us do—you’ll not only annoy your customers, you may make them angry. And you could lose them for good. If your call transfers could use some work, there are some easy steps to make them a whole lot better. Listen carefully. Whether your business

Procrastinating is something we all like to dabble in now and then, some of us more than others. But putting things off doesn’t always have to do with deadlines. Sometimes it’s an overflowing email inbox, 100 voicemails you’ve listened to and don’t know what to do with, or a pile of books doubling as a paperweight. From technological clutter to actual clutter, spring is the perfect time to stop putting off what you should have cleaned up months ago. Clean your inbox Let’s start with your email. There’s lots of clever metaphors (your ever-growing closet, your

At the very least once a month. In a fast-paced world where we’re inundated by endless scrolls on social media, a 24 hour news cycle, and increasing responsibilities at the office and at home, it’s hard to engage with customers regularly and effectively. And because there are so many statistics pointing to customers disengaging after poor customer service experiences, it pays to be on top of attentiveness and to approach this customer care with a hospitality-minded strategy. With that said, we’ve put together some thoughts on why and how you should keep in touch with your customers. Talk to

entrepreneuring using VOIP business phone

If you have a small business, you’re probably trying to cut corners. And one of those corners may be a business phone. After all, isn’t calling people—even answering the phone—outdated these days? In the era of texting, emails, and live chatting, why would someone want to actually pick up the phone to call a business? We hate to go old-school on you, but using the phone to make actual phone calls is still (surprisingly!) popular, especially when it comes to small businesses. If you’re thinking about (literally) cutting the cord, consider the following. People are

We’ve all been there: in need of assistance, furiously shouting “Operator” to an automated voice-over. Help seems, well, futile. Wouldn’t it be nice if you have a real live person on the other end of the line? Thanks to a growing number of outsourcing companies, it’s possible you now can. Live answering services have been becoming more popular and more affordable to small and medium businesses. Apart from the myriad reasons how they can help, perhaps the biggest is how it immediately elevates your brand. The big business look-and-feel can be a huge factor in whether customers choose your

You can have your dream job, a great boss, even a never-ending supply of your favorite coffee. But if your workspace isn’t quite right, your productivity can suffer. Whether your office is at home or away, a cubicle or an executive suite, if it’s dark and drab, messy, uncomfortable, and/or full of distractions, some small upgrades can yield amazing results. We’ve compiled nine simple ways to create a more productive workspace, from reducing clutter in your hard drive to increasing the green around you. Clear the (physical) clutter Nothing gets in the way of productivity like clutter. It makes

Analytics, in really any form, are paramount to a business’s success. So for a company of any size, especially those with a call center or those who suddenly have an increase in call volume, monitoring the customer experience and making it smooth is key. And the way to do that? Caller analytics. If you know how to use them, call analytics data can be a mighty tool. By studying the specifics, you can get a clearer picture of how long customers are spending on the phone when they call in, location of callers, wait times, times of day

You’ve decided to host your first webinar. That’s a big deal. It’s the first time you’re putting out such a big piece of content, the first time you’re putting yourself on camera, and, most importantly, the first time introducing your company to a wider audience. There are plenty of factors that go into making a successful webinar, but we wanted to highlight a few. Production & Promotion If this is your first webinar, it’s probably best to keep your focus razor-sharp. This is a time where you have 20-30 minutes of time to dive into a specific topic.

a call center of a company using toll-free numbers

Remember phones? Like, real ones. Not the 4K video-computers we have in our pockets. I’m talking about ones where there were actual buttons with number that you had to dial. We’ve come a long way from landlines, cordless & car phones. And we’ve also come a long way when talking about numbers. Let’s take a trip back in time. Back in the mid-1960s, AT&T devised a plan to lessen the burden of collect calls on their phone operators.The volume simply was too much. They devised something they dubbed “automatic collect calling,” where the charge for the caller is

It’s a foregone conclusion that your business should be using social media. But which social media platform is best for you? We don’t know the answer to that for you. What we do know is that Instagram in the last two years jumped from 800 million to one billion active users. That’s a lot of eyeballs and tons of engagement. Brands are jumping at the chance to get noticed but it takes a solid, specific strategy to win users and build a following. Here are some ideas to make sure your Instagram game is, as the kids say,

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

Having a local presence by way of a local number can be vital to your business. Just take a look at the statistics from 2018’s Small Business Saturday. According to BusinessWire.com, the nationwide initiative after the Thanksgiving holiday brought in a record-high $17.8 billion in sales. Furthermore, the survey from American Express found that 70% of adults queried are aware of the shopping day and 42% reported shopping at independently owned businesses. 41% of shoppers who participated on the day said they shopped Small online. If you’re a small business owner reading this, especially ones who don’t have

There are many reasons for wanting to record a call. Whether you’re a lawyer, therapist, realtor, notary, call center, utility company, bank, etc.—there are many types of businesses that rely on call recording to keep a record of conversations for legal or monitoring purposes. If you don’t currently record calls or are weighing whether you should, here are a few benefits call recording can provide. Business Advantages to Call Recording: Improve your products and service Capturing customer complaints or product shortcomings is an excellent way to improve your overall product strategy. Call recording is an easy method to

Setting end of year goals at a small business

Keeping a New Year resolution is hard. As a matter of fact, it’s downright impossible. According to a US News article, some 80% of people fail to follow through with their resolutions. That’s a high number, but, in fairness, resolutions can also be a tall order. We’re hyper-focused on big results and fast changes and feel a huge sense of disappointment when we can’t follow through. This rings true both for individuals or business owners looking to capitalize on the new year. So instead of putting an undue burden on setting impossible goals, why not shift the focus more on

As an owner of one or more businesses, your life is constantly full of mobile multi-tasking. You’re called away from the office all the time, you’re on the road, you’re just not available. You need some flexibility. Thanks to Phone.com’s Voicemail to Email service, you have that…and then some. This convenience is especially important when you’re away from the office and have your calls directed to your voicemail. So when your inbox begins to pile up, another responsibility looms over as you go about your day to day operations. This is, of course, unless you took the time to call

It’s the weekend and you need time to relax and recharge. It’s simply not feasible for your phone to be ringing off the hook. So, what can you do? With Phone.com’s Schedules feature, you can set certain hours for your business phone to ring and then direct all calls to voicemail. This is perfect for weekends, holidays, vacations, and other moments when you simply can’t answer. Now that your schedules are set up, we want to share some helpful tips on voicemail greeting protocol. Sometimes understanding your customers comes down to simply understanding human nature and the behaviors, attitudes, and

It’s difficult to quantify how much businesses use different software and applications for everyday operations. There are so many apps available for messaging, email, editing, social media, and an endless list of others that can be crucial for your small business. But there comes a point of saturation, where the benefit, ubiquity, and convenience actually becomes detrimental. Are you or your employees suffering from app overload? It’s very tempting to read that sentence in an infomercial voice, but app overload is actually real. According to a new study from CITE Research, which surveyed more than 2,000 workers across