Home Office Telephony

The Importance of Great Customer Service

In the beginning of this month I wrote a post about the things I hate about VOIP. In it I talked about my disappointment with Ringcentral's Digital Line product. Well, little did I know that my post would be read by Emily Call from Ringcentral. She sent me this very nice e-mail:

Hi Victoria,

I saw your recent post about the challenges of VoIP and in particular, your disappointment with RingCentral's new VoIP service, DigitalLine. Would you be interested in taking a quick meeting with our product support manager to see if we can work out the kinks in your DigitalLine service?

Please let me know a day/time that works for you and I will set up a conference line.

Best,
Emily Call for RingCentral

Now, that scored BIG points in my book. Here is a telecom company that actually cares about what the users are experiencing and want to hear feedback that will help them improve the product.

I took her up on her offer and had a series of phone calls and e-mails with one of their technical gurus. Turns out the reason why my digital line was not working had little to do with their service and a whole lot to do with my bandwidth and pc memory not being sufficient to work with their softphone. They solved that by sending me a pre-configured IP phone which works like a charm. I am thrilled. Calls through the IP phone are clear and crisp – no voice lag, static or echo. I get free calling in the US and Canada and I can have all my incoming calls go through my virtual pbx.

To be fair, Ringcentral's Unlimited Plan is pricier than Vonage or AT&T. They have a promo where you pay $24.99 a month for the first 6 months but then the price goes up to $49.99. However, if you compare all the features you get with their virtual pbx and their outstanding customer service I think it's worth it. If they can continue to impress me in those two fronts I will stay a customer even after the price goes up. To me great service is worth it's weight in gold – especially when it affects my ability to communicate with my clients and prospects.

If you want to learn more about Ringcentral's products and services click here.

Excellent Presentation About Virtual Telephony Services

I have just stumbled upon a webcast that PC Magazine held earlier this year titled: "Reap Big Cost Savings with Virtual Telephony Services". The event was sponsored in part by VirtualPBX and it discusses various telephony technologies for the small business market. The presentation is a little under an hour long but it is well worth your time if you want to learn more about Hosted PBX's, VOIP and other web communications services that can help your business stay connected with clients and prospects. Hope you enjoy it.

Virtual PBX V.S VOIP

Last week I had the pleasure of giving a talk for the Virtual Assistant Revolution organization on the topic of Virtual PBX's. After the presentation portion was over we had a lively discussion about several communications technologies available in the market today including Skype, Vonage and GrandCentral. From the questions I was getting it became apparent that there seems to be some confusion about the differences between Virtual PBX and VOIP technology. This did not surprise me since I had the same confusion when I first learned of them. To make matters worse, service providers that sell VOIP have also begun selling VPBX's and vice-versa further blurring the lines between them.

Here are the main differentiators as I see them:

• How the call is delivered to the end user – Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP primarily delivers call traffic – as the name would imply – over the user's broadband internet service. This bypasses the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) which is the network of "hard" lines that come into your physical location. This is why you are able to make free and/or very inexpensive calls using VOIP. The providers don't need to pay the owners of the PSTN to transport their traffic through their network. Usually VOIP providers offer free calls pc to pc (which does not use the PSTN at all) or they charge a small rate for you to initiate the call through VOIP and terminate it to an actual phone (land line or mobile phone).

  Virtual PBX calls are delivered using the PSTN. Here's an example of how VPBX's handle calls: a prospect calls your toll free number. That call first goes to the service provider's servers (their PBX) where, depending upon the answering rules you have set up, will be either terminated in your voicemail or routed to the phone you have designated, which could be your home line or your cell phone. This call is transported through the PSTN.

• Equipment requirements – VPBX services require no additional equipment since the calls are delivered to an actual phone. You access all the features and controls through a web based interface. Some, like Ringcentral, provide a soft phone that you can use to monitor your calls on your computer but that would be the only software required. With VOIP you can also use a soft phone but my experience with such devices has not been the best. The soft phone is vulnerable since it depends solely on your computer to be running smoothly.

  To get the best voice quality you will need to use a separate piece of equipment connected to your dsl or cable modem. Some service providers will give you this equipment for free as an incentive to use their service, some will allow you to buy a pre-configured device at the time you sign up or if you already have a device that is compatible with their service you may use your own device. In either case, if something happens to that piece of equipment your service will be severely affected, sometimes crippled.

• Call cost – As mentioned on item #1, this is where VOIP has a clear advantage over VPBX's. Due to the fact that VOIP is not entirely dependent on the PSTN, service providers can offer their services for little or per minute cost. VPBX service providers typically charge all traffic going through the VPBX – including faxes, voicemails & calls that are forwarded to your phone – by the minute. It is very important that before you decide what service is best for your business you take a close look at your call patterns – not just how many minutes you are using but where you are calling and where your prospects or clients are calling you from.

  Also, when you compare VPBX service providers make sure they don't double bill for calls. I'll explain. Let's say that you have your VPBX set up so that it automatically forwards all your calls to your cell phone. Some providers treat those as two separate calls – the incoming call that was answered by the VPBX and the outgoing call to your cell phone – and they charge accordingly. So for every one minute you spend talking on your phone you'll actually be paying for two minutes. Not all VPBX providers will be forthcoming with that information on their websites so you might need to call them to verify.

All these differences will at some point fade as the technology is moving towards all voice traffic being handled through IP based networks and equipment. Some say the PSTN is dying a slow death. Only time will tell.

If you have any questions about these two technologies feel free to contact me or leave me a comment.

Top 10 Benefits Of A Virtual PBX

On the last post I talked about what a Virtual PBX (VPBX) is. On this one I will list what I consider to be the main benefits of using a VPBX in your business. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Work from anywhere – A VPBX allows you to forward your calls automatically to your cell phone or any other alternate number. This means you no longer need to be tied to your desk to wait for that important call. The coffee shop, the airport, the beach, any place can now become your office. If you travel often you can access all your messages and faxes through the web as well as get notifications by text message, e-mail or pager as soon as you have received a new message.

2. Project a more polished, established and reputable company image – Your automated cyber secretary (aka automated attendant) will answer your calls, transfer your calls and take messages. When a caller hears "Please hold the line while I transfer your call to John Smith" they picture John Smith in a suit, sitting at a desk in his office. He doesn't need to know you are sitting in a coffee shop in your shorts and T-shirt – unless you want to tell him. Remember, perception is reality. And the most common perception is that someone in a suit and tie is more trustworthy than someone in a pair of shorts. Ask anyone.

3. Unified Communications - That's the fancy way to say you have one phone number that will handle all your calls, faxes and voicemails. Think of how much tidier your business card will look with just one number as your contact number instead of listing your business line number, cell phone number, fax number and pager number. You can maximize this benefit by using a "vanity" toll free number that spells out something memorable like 800-call-john. No prospect will ever forget that number.

4. Marketing information about your company available 24/7 – Prospects can dial an information extension and listen to a list of your products and services, or details on your latest promotions. They can also request the system to fax them a brochure, white paper or an article of interest to them. Your prospect can do all of this even at 3 AM while you are sound asleep. Your business can now be "open" 24 hours a day.

5. No software or equipment to buy – VPBX services are an add-on to your current services and require no additional equipment. Think of a VPBX as a system that ties all of your communications services together.

6. You can make changes to your system on the fly – With the local phone or cell companies if you want to make any changes to your service you have to call them, wait on hold until someone answers, request the change, wait for the change to complete and the pay them a service fee for that privilege. With VPBXs you can make any change you want at any time you want through their web based interface or through phone access. Adding and deleting, extensions, changing your greetings, activating features, setting up your call forwarding rules, anything you want to move, add or change can be done by you without any waiting or extra charges.

7. Easy and automatic disaster recovery – As I discussed in my previous post, you should always be ready for a disaster. VPBXs will provide business continuity through any situation that may face you. Being able to quickly and easily make changes to your system will ensure that no calls are missed and that prospects can continue to reach you – or at least your business.

8. Ability to prioritize calls - As an independent professional or home based business owner your time is extremely precious. How will you ever have the time to get any work done if you are at the mercy of your phone? Most VPBX's offer what they call a "whisper" feature. This feature allows you to listen to the name of the person who is calling and then decide if you'll take the call, send the caller to voicemail or transfer the caller to another extension (for example, a colleague or the info line extension). You could also place your system in "Do Not Disturb" mode which means all your callers will immediately get your voicemail without the phone ever ringing. Then you can answer your voicemails at your convenience. Aahh! A little peace and quiet can be so nice.

9. Have a local presence in a distant market - Aside from a toll free number which allows for anyone in the country to call you without them having to pay a dime, you can also get a local number in many areas that are not local to you. For example, if you are in Miami, Florida but you have a lot of clients in Los Angeles, California, you can get an L.A number that will terminate in your VPBX. This gives you a local presence no matter where you are located.

10. Pay only for what you need – VPBXs systems are scalable and grow as you grow. You can start out with a simple system and a limited amount of minutes and as your business grows you can add more minutes, more extensions and more features. All this without having to change systems.

Can you see why I love Virtual PBX's? Never have so many features and capabilities been available to micro businesses like ours. Take advantage of this great technology! I will soon add to this blog a list of my recommended VPBX companies but in the meantime just do a Google search and you will find the most popular. If you have any questions about them feel free to contact me.

What In The World Is A Virtual PBX and Why Should I Care?

In this post I would like to simplify a very technical sounding term: Virtual PBX (VPBX) . As an independent service professional or small business owner you may have heard that term here and there and maybe wondered if your business would benefit from having one. Some of you may have a VPBX and still not understand exactly what it is. Here is the regular Joe's (or Jane, in my case) bare bones explanation of a Virtual PBX.

To understand what a VPBX is, you need to first understand what a PBX is. You might not know it but you come into contact with PBX's almost daily; when you call your bank to get your balance, call your doctor's office to make an appointment, or when you call your insurance agency to ask about your policy.

A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is simply a phone switch which routes calls within a private network – like an office building or a campus. In the olden days PBX's were huge pieces of equipment that resided in a business' phone closet and allowed calls to be received by one main extension (typically the operator or receptionist) and then transferred to other extensions within that network.

As technology progressed PBX's got smaller and smarter. The PBXs of today can do so much more than just transfer calls. They can take messages, forward your calls to outside numbers, put callers on hold, speed-dial and the list goes on.

Historically, only big corporations or government offices could afford to buy such systems. Little entrepreneurs such as you and I have had to depend on the local phone company to act as our PBX. We could get some of the features like Call Waiting, Call Hold and Call Forwarding but the choices were limited.

Enter the Virtual PBX. This marvel of modern technology provides you – the solo or small business owner – practically all the features of a conventional PBX for a fraction of the cost.

The main differentiator between a PBX and a VPBX is how the service is delivered. With a PBX you have to buy hardware that is housed in your place of business. Not only is this hardware extremely expensive for the budget of a 1 to 5 person business but it would take up quite a bit of space in your already crammed home office.

A Virtual PBX is mostly software driven and the service provider's servers that house this software could be located on the other side of the country (or the world) from your office – hence the term "virtual". The provider partitions a section of their pbx and gives you full control over it through a web interface.

Why should you care about Virtual PBX's? Because like it or not, home-based businesses competing in the marketplace still suffer from an image problem. Credibility is usually the biggest hurdle to overcome when you work from home.

Picture this scenario: a potential client surfs the web for a service he needs. He comes across two company's websites that appear to address his needs. He calls the first company and he is greeted by a very pleasant receptionist who takes his information, gives him some information about the company and tells him someone from the sales department will call him back. He decides to call the second company. The line rings several times before a voice answers the line with a simple: "Hello?" Click. Dial tone.

Now, I know most of you would not answer the phone that way (or at least I sincerely hope you wouldn't) but even if you answer with your most chipper, professional voice it does not quite have the effect of the first call.

For better or worse, consumers often equate bigger with better. I'm definitely not suggesting that you pretend to be bigger than you are. I don't particularly subscribe to that philosophy. I am suggesting that you set up a system that will give your caller a sense of security, a feeling of having reached a professional, polished, established business. Virtual PBX's allow you to do just that.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will share with you all the benefits of using a Virtual PBX for your business.

Things I Hate About VOIP

Ahhh! The promise of free calls and how it makes us overlook a multitude of sins… When I first heard about VOIP I thought "What a great idea! I can use my high speed internet to carry my long distance voice conversations and not have to pay per minute anymore." Vonage was the first service I tried out and I was pretty happy with it. Then my router got fried during one of our frequent Florida thunderstorms. I couldn't justify spending the money to purchase another one right away so that was that. Ever since then I have not been overly impressed with VOIP.

Here are the top 5 things I hate about VOIP:

1. The quality of your VOIP service depends solely on the quality and reliability of your broadband connection - As a solo business owner, did you purchase business grade high speed internet? I know I didn't. It was too expensive! I went with residential grade service which works fine but has one major draw-back. It is asynchronous. What does that mean? It means my download speed is lightning fast but my upload speed is quite a bit slower (about 1/10^th the speed of downstream.) Service providers designed residential service that way figuring most home users are more interested in downloading (music, streaming video and files) than they are uploading. Business class service is typically synchronous – same speeds for downloads and uploads. VOIP service works best with synchronous service but who can afford it? Another little known fact is that if there's an outage my cable company does not rush to restore my service. Business grade customers are fixed first and as a "residential customer" I am not the priority. I've had my broadband down for days at a time because of this policy. Can you afford to have your business line down for days?
2. Call quality often stinks – Maybe I'm one of the unlucky ones but I have yet to use a VOIP service that matches the call quality of a regular (POTS) line. Crackling, echoes, static and speech delays are common, not to mention dropped calls. I recently tested Ringcentral's VOIP service and was heartbroken. I so wanted it to work properly because I LOVE their virtual pbx service. Unfortunately it was awful. Many times during a conversation I could hear the other person but they could not hear me. How frustrating! I've had similar problems with Skype but the most annoying was the speech delay. I would be talking and would hear the other person try to say something which actually was a comment they made a few seconds ago about something I said. By the time I tried to reply to that comment she was trying to reply to my last comment from a few seconds ago. It's a mess! Maybe if I had purchased their IP phone instead of using their softphone I wouldn't have had as much of an issue. See Equipment Requirements below.
3. Equipment requirements – Most VOIP services require that you install a device that is connected to your cable or DSL modem. Some service providers will give you the device for free when you sign up for a service contract. Others require that you pay for the device and they can be pricey. Even if you get the device for free under a promotion keep in mind that if it breaks (like it happened to me) you will need to purchase another one to replace it. There are providers who utilize a "softphone" which is software you install on your computer that converts your computer into a telephone. All you need is a PC Headset. Again, you are now dependent on your computer and if it crashes or it is running slow it will render your phone service out of business. Power outages can also leave you without service since no equipment will run without electricity.
4. E911 – In the US, a POTS line will allow you to dial 911 which connects you to your local emergency service (fire, police or EMT). A lot of VOIP carriers (because they are non-local by nature) do not provide 911 services. If you use VOIP services make sure your carrier offers some kind of 911 service. If not, make sure you have a regular line in your home. The last thing you need is to have an accident or a fire and not be able to call for help.
5. Security Issues – Unlike a POTS line which is practically un-hackable (there is no such thing as an 100% secure ANYTHING) VOIP does have some security vulnerabilities that you should be aware of. Read this article for an overview of VOIP security issues: Security Threats in VOIP .

Despite appearances, I am not completely against VOIP. If you are one of the lucky ones who has VOIP and it works for you I think that's great. I'm jealous. I want my FREE calls!

When Disaster Strikes

As I write this, tropical storm Noel is hanging out in the Bahamas. Although it is swirling quite a ways from where I live (just south of Vero Beach) we have been seeing a lot of rain with wind gusts of 20 to 30 miles an hour. I'm used to this. I go through it every year around this time. Except for a few years when I traveled, I've lived half of my life in Puerto Rico and the other half in Florida – both smack in the middle of "Hurricane Alley". Now that I'm a business owner I not only have to worry about my personal home and possessions but also my business operations and assets.

Wherever you happen to live, no one is safe from business crippling disasters; earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, ice storms and on and on. Most independent service professionals are smart enough to have a disaster recovery plan of sorts. You may have an online data backup service like Mozy or a portable hard drive but have you given any thought to your phone system? How will you stay in touch with clients and prospects if your home office is destroyed or your phone and internet services go down for an extended period of time?

Here's a checklist of things to consider:

• Do you have the ability to forward you main business line to a cell phone; yours or an employee or colleague?
• Can you retrieve your voicemails by calling your system? If you only have answering machine you may lose important messages if it's destroyed.
• Will you be able to continue to receive important faxes? Or are you solely dependent on your fax machine?
• If the disaster has taken out both your home office business line and your cell phone line (this has happened to me more than once) are you able to record a message on your system letting clients know your situation and giving them alternative options to speaking to you – such as calling a colleague or leaving you a message that you can listen to when you are able. Right before hurricane Wilma in 2005 - which was projected to (and did) move right over my area - I recorded an outgoing message on my system telling callers I would be unavailable and that I would get back to them as soon as possible. In the meantime they could call a colleague of mine who was not in the path of the storm.

This is one of the main reasons I recommend virtual pbx services. They allow you to get back to business much more quickly than land lines or even VOIP services.

Noel is a mild storm compared to others I've lived through and it is not forecasted to come my way. Even if it does, I'm ready. Is you business ready for a disaster?