One of the biggest problems facing entrepreneurs and small business owners is that of mobility. With recent popularity and advancement of the smart phone, folks have been able to enjoy more in terms of how mobile they can be — e-mail can get forwarded to their smart phone and of course, mobile telephone capabilities allow a lot more freedom now than ever before.
But the last frontier, so to speak, has been how to deal with “what happens back at the office.” This includes voice calls to your receptionist, faxes, voicemail, and so on.
The first paragraph mentioned how the smart phone’s technology has helped with mobility. Given the technological advances in the past few years, companies can now manage virtually any application digitally and inexpensively. By taking advantage of inexpensive technologies, small business can now project a Fortune 500 image while allowing mobility and, often, reducing expenses.
Ingeniously, this technology works by essentially having your customers call into a computer. This computer answers the calls or accepts faxes and, in digital format, forwards them to you. You can receive forwarded calls, voicemails, faxes anywhere — your mobile phone, your smart phone, your e-mail inbox. This means you can be at the spa or golf course while reviewing pages of a sales contract or taking calls from your toll-free number while sitting on the train.
The market leader in this segment and the company we recommend is RingCentral. This single company alone can propel a small business’s image to the big time. And since image is so important these days with company failures and consumer apprehension about dealing with new “players,” image must take precedent when setting up your back-end. At any rate, through RingCentral you can project a better image through the following:
Toll-free number. This feature has a particular importance for companies whose client base reaches across different area codes. Consultants, service & support providers, mobile sales agents come to mind, and a toll-free number allows their clients to reach them wherever they are and wherever the entrepreneur or small business owner is located. Not only this, but toll-free numbers provide a Fortune 500 image.
Voicemail and Virtual Receptionist with “hold” music. Call any Fortune 500 company and after you tell the receptionist your party’s extension (or, more likely, key in the extension yourself), you get to wait on hold and listen to fancy music and then find the party’s voicemail. With RingCentral’s program, you get everything including the automated receptionist, the music, and the voicemail. This feature is Free with RingCentral.
Call Queues. This standard option allows you to capture as many callers as possible. Imagine that you are servicing a client over the phone when a prospect calls to solicit your services. In the past, this new client would get a voicemail and have to choose between leaving a message or calling your competitor. With a call queue, this caller gets to listen to that fancy music a little longer while you finish up your call. This feature means you lose less business.
Internet Fax. This all-important feature allows you to send and receive faxes by e-mail or online. Yes, this means you can manage faxes with most web-enabled smart phones. What a great way to win back your freedom, and it’s free!
The feature list has a surreal quality in that items you might expect to be “optional” are actually standard. Still, there is one disappointment with RingCentral. Their DigitalLine VoIP function is optional when they offer so much else for free… what gives? In reality, however, this option has little importance to most small business owners. And, for subscribers who absolutely need VoIP capabilities, the extra $7.99 is more than justified.
Whether you choose RingCentral or another provider, the key motivators for using such a service include mobility for you and your employees, true cost-effectivness, and instant image enhancement (your customers won’t know whether you work out of your basement or out of the 40th floor of a Wall Street Tower. Most plans cost roughly $30/month with RingCentral’s most popular plan (which includes a lot more standard features than their competitors) starts at $24.99 per month with a Free Trial period.
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