Home Office Telephony

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.

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.