It looks like there’s going to be a new toll free number soon. There is speculation that the new toll free number will be 855, to go along with these other US toll free numbers: 866, 877, 888 and 800. If you own a business, and want to get a jump on the competition, you might want to contact your local phone company, or your long distance carrier, and see if you can pre-order your business name or a special vanity number.
Archive for the ‘Business Services’ Category
New Toll Free Number: 855
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Qwest Choice® Business Plus
Thursday, August 26th, 2010You know, I love Qwest and all, (I must have, since I used to pay then $500 plus per month for 3 business lines, a few features and long distance service in my small call center days), but it’s time that small business people in Qwest’s 14 states do a little complaining about their rates.
The Qwest Choice® Business Plan in my town costs $55 per month for a local line and 15 features. If you’re willing to sign a 1, 2, or 3 year contract with them, the price can drop all the way down to $44 per month. WhooHoo, only $44 per month for 36 months for 1 line and 15 features… Yea! I can hardly wait to be saddled with a $1584 local phone bill. (You’re getting the sarcasm in all this, right?)
The reason I’m giving you this little lesson on Qwest, is because I want to tell you a little story about my brother, who has a small medical business in Washington state. He had 3 small business lines, plus DSL service from Qwest and it was costing him over $200 per month, and that didn’t include long distance service. In this time of economic chaos, dumping an extra few hundred dollars down the drain every month can really make a difference to your quality of life.
So, I finally talked my brother into trying a VoIP plan. We picked Phonepower because it has a second cloned line for free, which means that if you are using your phone, and someone calls, other phones in the office still ring, just like if you had a hunt group. Also, if you are on the phone, another person in the office can call out on the same line. This service offers unlimited local and long distance calling in Canada and the US for $19.95 per month, plus like $3 in taxes.
What we did was have his toll free number pointed to his second Qwest line, and then we switched his main office number over to Phonepower. Phonepower got the whole thing done in less than a week, and the Qwest number wasn’t switched to the Phonepower box until the Phonepower box was working, so there weren’t any lost calls.
It took a week because the first router they sent out was bad. It wasn’t that big of a deal, because my brother just went to the Phonepower website, pushed the tech support “Chat Now” button, and had the Tech check out his router remotely. The guy asked what his phone number was, and then called him back and went through checking the router with him. The Tech then said it was a hardware problem, and that he would send him out another box that day, along with postage to send the broken one back.
The new router came in a couple of days, my brother plugged it into the system and then called me to see what I thought of the sound quality. The sound quality was better than Qwest’s had been, because the lines into my brother’s office were old worn out copper, and Qwest had strung a new line when they put in the DSL. But, he couldn’t surf the web at the same time, so he wanted to know what to do. I had him reboot his modem, and that’s all it took. He could then cruise the web at high speed and talk to me at the same time. Yea!
So, overall, my brother’s total telecom bill, without DSL, now comes to about $30 per month instead of almost $300 per month for the 3 Qwest lines, DSL and long distance service (because he now gets unlimited long distance for free). He now has the 2 lines from Phonepower for $19.95 per month, plus an internet fax line from RapidFax for $9.95 per month. He figures that his business will save over $2500 each year now, over what he would have paid to Qwest.
Fell free to post any comments you may have about Qwest, Phonepower or Rapidfax, so that others can get a second opinion.
Updated Business VoIP Plans
Monday, August 9th, 2010I’ve been updating VoIP plans over the last week, so here’s a list of the updated business VoIP plans, just in case your looking for a way to save your business money.
Vanity Toll Free Numbers
Monday, August 2nd, 2010Vanity toll free numbers are fun to have for your business, and they help customer remember your number, so that they don’t have to look it up each time they call you to place an order. While it’s not especially important to have a custom toll free number if you don’t get call-in orders, it still helps customers and suppliers remember who you are and what types of sales and services you offer.
In the old days, you had to contact AT&T and ask them to get and hold your custom toll free number for you, but now, there are sites online that offer vanity toll free number for a monthly fee. custom toll free numbers start at around $19.00 per month, so stop by and see if they have one for your business today.
Sell Your Obsolete Mobile Phone Now
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010If you’ve recently upgraded your mobile phone, then the chances are you also have your old phone lying around somewhere. In reality, quite a few individuals have several years worth of old cellular phones lying un used in drawers and cupboards which have been forgotten about and are just gathering dust.
If this applies to you then you may perhaps be interested to understand that it is possible to sell your old mobile for cash on the web. By going to a cellular cell phone recycling price tag comparison site you can very easily discover out how much money you could potentially get for your past cell phone.
When you could have discovered the ideal price tag, you then need to fill in an on the net form, print off a postal label and place your older phones in the post to the recycling company. Upon receipt of your older mobile phone, assuming it truly is as you described it you will probably be paid money for it.
Once you’ve got offered your old mobile phone, quite a few distinct things may possibly occur to it. If it is usually a latest model that is nevertheless in demand, then it will probably be sold on. If it is usually a operating but obsolete telephone it’ll most likely be shipped abroad to a nation exactly where senior mobile phones are nevertheless in requirement.
If the cell phone is broken then it may well be used for spares, or broken down for recycling. There are numerous important elements in mobile phones, including valuable metals for instance gold. An intriguing statistic is that mobile cell phones contain much more gold by weight than gold ore, so, cell telephone recycling is literally a gold mine!
Naturally the benefits of offering your older mobile phone aren’t only monetary, you will find environmental rewards too. If a cell phone is re-used, that effectively implies a brand new phone doesn’t need to be made. Also, old mobile phones contain lots of toxins, so, where cell phones are scrap they require to become disposed of properly.
Older mobile mobile phones really should by no means be burned or sent to landfill as they trigger contamination, so, even if you’re only provided a extremely reduced value for an aged phone, you need to still market your cellular for environmental reasons.
Unlimited Toll Free Service Under $50 Per Month
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010If you run a business with a high toll free call volume, you might want to take a look at iTeleCenter’s unlimited toll free service plan. iTeleCenter’s unlimited toll free service comes with a whole bunch of really cool additional features, which include:
- Auto Attendant / Main Greeting Options.
- Voice mail to email or text.
- Mailboxes with multiple extensions. Look like a big company, even if you’re not.
- Online faxing.
- Follow-Me call forwarding.
- Plus, over 30 additional features.
Visit their site for more information on getting unlimited toll free service for less than $50 per month.
Cheap In-Home Business Phone Service
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010This is an answer to an email I received about setting up phone service for a small in-home business. Since I’m sure that other people have the same questions, here’s my answer:
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Most people working out of their home just add another home line, since it’s costs less than a business line.
A business VoIP line would be the cheapest traditional way to do it, because you could get a second fax line with it for just a few dollars more. And, if you hook it up in front of your computers, it would get access to the bandwidth first, which would keep your call quality good.
I personally use a MagicJack for my business line because I’m cheap, and the call quality is fine. I also have a toll free number ringing into my MagicJack, and that costs me around 3 cents per minute for incoming calls. Then, you can add a fax service, like rapidfax, for $10.00 per month, and you’re done.
Here’s what I pay:
- Magicjack: $1.67 per month. ($20 per year.)
- Rapidfax: $10.00 per month.
- Toll free number: $2.00 per month.
- Toll free service: 3 cents per minute.
- My total expense is around $16 per month….
Of course, since I do this for a living, I’ve played with a lot of the VoIP company’s products, and I’m not willing to pay for expensive phone service anymore, especially when I know that the call quality between VoIP companies any more is negligible. Almost every phone company that’s still offering traditional land line phone service is calling it “Digital” now, because it’s a VoIP product, but they don’t want to call it VoIP and alert the consumer to that fact, because that would lower it’s value/price.
If you want a regular land line service, enter your address and zipcode in the search form at http://www.calling-plans.com/local-telephone-service.htm and see what services it shows in your local area. Then compare that to the VoIP prices listed on the bottom of the page: http://www.calling-plans.com/local-telephone-service.htm
Then look at the prices shown above in my Magicjack/Rapidfax example and see how that compares.
Here is a link that will let you try Rapidfax for 30 days for free.
Here’s a link that will let you try Magicjack for 30 days.
If you like those 2 products, then email me back, and I’ll set up your toll free service and have it ring into your Magicjack account.
If you decide you really don’t want to try VoIP, then grab one of the local services offered through the form on http://www.calling-plans.com/local-telephone-service.htm, or your local Yellow pages, and then email me back and I’ll dig into traditional long distance service and toll free service options for you.
Create Loyal Customers and Business Will Thrive
Sunday, May 9th, 2010First sales are always more difficult than repeat sales. For this reason, owners of small businesses constantly look for ways to keep their customers happy. Regardless of what you sell, there are a lot of ways you can maintain a loyal customer base. Below are a few tips:
Stay an Expert In Your Field
Keep up to date on the news and innovations that affect your industry. It’s critical for your customers to think of you as an expert in your industry. With easy accessibility to information on the Internet, customers do their research and are more informed than ever. And no customer wants to know more than the “expert”. That is why it is so important for you to commit to ongoing training and doing what you need to do to stay up to date with your industry. Customers will stay loyal if you stay committed to lifelong learning.
Solve the Problems Fast
Customers rarely tell you straight out if they perceive an issue, so it is important to stay intuitive. You might want to take your customer’s pulse periodically by reaching out and asking if everything is going well, or if there are areas that need improvement in your working relationship.
It is most important to avoid the SODDI defense at all costs when you do hear of a problem your customer is encountering (some other dude did it). It’s your business, so everything that goes wrong is your fault – take the blame with grace. Then, take action to fix it fast. Your customers rarely encounter that mentality. Instead of the error being foremost in their minds, the amiable resolution will keep them returning as repeat customers. In fact, you may find that some of your biggest “problem” customers will end up being your best referral source.
Remind the Customer Why They Chose You in the First Place
This is no time to be humble; continually point out your advantages over your competitors, and praise your customer for being so perceptive and astute to choose you. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t like to be praised, and its the perfect opportunity to help them recall your competitive advantages at the same time.
Creating loyal customers is no more than treating them so well that no one else could compare. Give them such great service automatically, and they will demand the same for years to come. That’s a loyal customer.
Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year” to learn about an online accounting program that makes it easy to track repeat customer profitability.
Lowering Business Telecom Costs With Pre Paid Cellular
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010I know it’s weird to think that you could save money for your business with pre-paid cell phones, and most larger companies probably couldn’t, but with smaller firms, that can’t afford a huge corporate account, pay as you go cell phone service could actually help you get on top of your cell phone bill.
The main way that pre-paid phones will save you some money, is that your employees will have to come to you for a refill, instead of just blindly calling, texting and downloading to their heart’s content without getting that “Heads Up” on day three that they already blew through $50 worth of service. This will force them to use their own cell phones for personal calls, texting and downloading, because no one wants to go to the boss and tell them that they’ve been wasting money and time.
BUSINESS PHONE SOLUTIONS FOR ORGANISATIONS ON THE MOVE
Thursday, April 15th, 2010Mobile tools are becoming a key component of business strategy and the mobility of an organization’s business phone system has a direct impact on efficiency and productivity.
Following is a very brief overview at some of the advantages of a mobile business telephone system.
Improved productivity and efficiency
Conventional PABX systems can have limitations which can restrict employees’ ability to deliver exceptional customer service.They’re unable to function optimally which will compromise service delivery. With a cordless business phone system, staff can be contacted at any time.They can make quick decisions, answer queries promptly and generally improve the way they go about their business which means a better business as a whole. Mobility is a crucial tool in getting your business on the road to success as it can enable freedom of movement and round-the-clock accessibility.
Improved service
Service is another key driver of success in today’s competitive environment.Customers expect superior service – all the time. If they don’t get what they want from your company, they’ll look elsewhere.The right tools are required if staff are to deliver exceptional service. With wireless business phone systems, staff can also contact other members of staff quickly and efficiently to answer queries or problems, making the flow of information seamless and far more effective.
Freedom of movement
Wireless solutions also ensure total coverage of premises. This is especially important where staff are required to move between various areas and where the nature of their work makes them difficult to locate eg. warehouse staff or messengers. Mobile solutions are also most effective in areas where wired PABXs can’t reach effectively – such as factories, department stores and hospitals.
Users can move around freely without fear of dropping a call or being unavailable, with base stations strategically placed to ensure total coverage.Incoming calls to the DECT number are rerouted automatically to the handset of the staff member, wherever they are, so that they are always contactable.
Ease of integration
A cordless telephone option can be integrated with ease into existing business phone systems.Often all that is required is add-on products.
Mobile solutions also don’t require large amounts of cabling which is another benefit.Given that a business can spent up to twenty per cent of the cost of its PABX on wiring, installation of cordless technology can have a meaningful impact on cost containment.
Administrative benefits
When moving offices, employees need not change their extension numbers and the whole system won’t need reprogramming.Cost savings are also realized as business cards, stationery and telephone lists etc don’t have to be reprinted when there’s an office reshuffle.
Rejigging your business phone system could be just the ticket to accelerate some positive changes for your organization. If you’re going places, go mobile.