Sales Call! Why Sometimes an Email Just Isn’t Enough

In today’s digital age, it’s becoming much more common to communicate through email or text than in person or on the phone. But sometimes in business, you really need that personal touch that electronic communication just doesn’t deliver, especially when it comes to closing that big sale. Here are just a few of the advantages of picking up the phone instead of hitting the send button.

Talking Builds Relationships – First and foremost, if you want to wow that prospect and land his business, the best way to do so is by laying a foundation for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. Speaking over the phone with your clients and prospects shows them that you really care and are willing to make time for them.

Real-Time Conversations Reveal Opportunities – If you only communicate through email, you never get the chance to get real-time feedback. While your electronic message will only contain information about the matter at hand, a live conversation allows you to ask questions and possibly reveal new needs and opportunities that your company can offer solutions for.

Your Message is Clearer – It can be difficult to decipher emotion, tone and attitude from written messages. Speaking over the phone, however, makes it much easier to convey your message clearly so that it is understood the first time, as well as answer any questions immediately as they come up.

Phone Calls Create a Sense of Urgency – Any good salesperson knows that the most important step in landing that big client is to create a call to action and a sense of urgency. Unless you’re communicating with someone who has already committed to working with you, chances are an email isn’t going to produce that important urge to get them to move to the next step. Over the phone, however, you can address and overcome any objectives and close the deal.

A Phone Call Gets a Response – People tend to ignore their email inboxes from time to time, which means getting someone to respond to you electronically could be a challenge. A phone call, on the other hand, elicits a faster response, which increase your chances of making that sale.

Emails, text messages and other electronic communications have certainly made our lives easier, but sometimes – particularly when it comes to making a sale – there’s just nothing like a good, old fashioned phone call. And we can help you make sure you’re always available, whenever that important call comes in with a virtual phone system, so you never miss another opportunity again.

Labels: phone system, sales tips, small business

Synclio’s Youtube Channel Goes Live with a Brand New Video!

Great news everyone!

Synclio’s Youtube channel just went live, and we’ve got a brand new video to show for it.

Take Mamet’s storytelling, stir in some Hitchcockian suspense, Cameron clichés, and a squirt of artificial tears curtsey of everyone's favorite governor Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and you’ve got one incredible story about a virtual PBX system traveling back in time to stop the assassination of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (before they could even spell the word ‘Google’) by a giant fibre-optic cable fished down a wormhole when the evil telecoms realized without Google there could be no cloud, VOiP, or any such shenanigans...

Ok, I may have laid it a bit heavy there—but we do have some great stuff coming up!

Tune in to learn about cool new features, watch how-to videos, or just kick back and enjoy some quality entertainment. It may not be Terminator 5—but it sure beats the last two sequels!

Without further ado, here's the first video from Synclio:

Labels: business, cloud pbx, phone system, telecommunications, virtual pbx video, voip, youtube, youtube channel

How a Live Answer Service Can Supplement Your Virtual IVR

So you’ve decided to sign up with a virtual PBX provider. Good job. Give yourself a pat on the back—you deserve it. Today’s IVR technologically can address many common queries via an automated service and make life easier both for you and your clients. However, there will be certain times when your auto attendant will not do.

“What’s that?” you’re asking—am I trying to sell you out of the idea now that you’ve almost converted?

Not at all—IVR technology does a great job fulfilling its purpose, which is to reduce call volume. But this doesn’t mean that it’s the last you’ll be hearing from your customers. An IVR menu acts as a strainer separating simple queries that can be dealt with automatically from complex ones—such as sales or unique customer issues—where human interaction might become necessary.

So you’ll still need to man your phones.

For small businesses with limited staff and resources, pairing IVR with Live Answer can make a lot of sense.

Because Synclio’s parent company, AnswerConnect, is a major provider of live answering services catering to many Fortune 500 companies, we are able to offer smooth integration with our virtual PBX plans at a very attractive per-minute rate.

Here are some of the things a Live Answer service can do for you:

Keep you covered when you don’t have enough staff

As a small business owner, your team must be spread thin as it is, and if a key member calls in sick or a sudden surge of interest takes you unprepared, you may simply not have the manpower to handle calls and they’ll be relayed to your voicemail. But these could have been sales opportunities that may not return, or customers in need of support who are sure to feel unhappy.

A Live Answer service, paired with your IVR menu, could pick up the slack just when you need that little bit of extra help to keep your service tight.

Continue to provide service when you deserve a break: after hours, weekends, and holidays.

Even if you and your colleagues can manage throughout the day, everyone deserves a break. And you can only rotate evenings and weekends for so long before it starts messing with your head. Unfortunately, we’re all running on the same schedule, sharing the same evenings, weekends, and holidays—so hiring after hours help can be very costly.

Again, you could just leave it up to your voicemail—but would you really want to miss a sale only because it happened to come in after you left the office?

Being available 24/7 not only helps your bottom-line, it also boosts your brand image—a service just seems so much more reliable when customers know that, no matter what time or day it is, a support person is always within reach.

Support business growth

Business growth is a blessing. We all hope for it, work for it, pray for it... but—not unlike a rainstorm in the desert—we can’t always predict when it’s going to hit , even with our best plans and forecasts.

Live Answer can give you the confidence you need to go out there and garner business at full steam, knowing that when it does come pouring down you won’t be caught unprepared.

Provide the benefits of professional tools

When you sign up with a Live Answer service from a provider like Answer Connect, you not only get the equivalent of an in-house attendant, you get a team of professionals who’ve made it their business to provide exceptional service, and who do it with specialized tools that make them a powerhouse of efficiency.

These include:

• Lead capturing tools
• Lead generation
• Call routing & transfer
• Call forwarding
• Urgent Call Handling

And more...

Only Use it When You Need to

Sure, paying bites. No one likes it. But the best part about Synclio’s integrated Live Answer service is that you don’t have to use it unless you really need to. Simply set up call forwarding to your regular departments first, with Live Answer as the last resort. You can completely customize it to your preference, and you'll be billed at a low per-minute rate without anything upfront. This ensures that you don’t run into any more charges than you absolutely must in order to strike that golden balance between tight customer-service and your bottom-line.

conclusion

Just think of it as your contingency plan, as something to fall back on—kinda like the air bag in your vehicle. It cost a little extra and you bought it hoping you’ll never have to use it—but you’ll sure be happy it's there if you ever did.

Labels: 24/7, business, call center, customer service, how a live answer service can, phone system, virtual PBX

The Benefits of Visual Voicemail: Seeing is the New Hearing

Voicemail as we know it has been around for a while, and it’s probably about time the whole thing got a facelift.

Sure, it’s been great for gauging different people’s take on ‘a short message’ or for providing those we’ve been trying to avoid with a less obtrusive way of pestering us—even for receiving an important communication here and there—but let’s admit it, retrieving those messages could become a hassle.

First you had to dial-in and enter a silly pin number that, for some dang reason, never seemed to stick in your head. Next, assuming you’ve managed past the four-digit gateway, you had to plough through five minutes of your mother-in-law’s daily quibbling before getting to your client’s urgent message—asking you to call back no later than 4pm and it’s now 4:05, thanks to your extended family...

If you hung up and spent a few moments counting your blessings (or simply counting to ten), and later wanted to revisit that last message, you had to go through the entire process all over again.

While this might be better than the mini-cassettes of old—it’s like telling yourself now that you should be content with a good breadknife when they’ve already invented sliced-bread.

So what’s sliced-bread for voicemail? Visual Voicemail.

Visual voicemail lets you view your VM messages in a visual sequence listed by the caller’s name, just like viewing contacts in your call-log or songs in a playlist. This gives you the freedom to selectively prioritize which messages you’re going to listen to, when, and in what order (yep, dance around Wilma all you want or simply press delete—she’ll never even know!). What’s more, there’s no need to dial in—you simply tap the voicemail icon on your smartphone (or web browser if you're using a PC) and find all your messages magically listed right there.

If that’s not enough, additional features let you forward messages, reply via SMS/MMS, and even have them transcribed to text using voice recognition technology. While this last is presently estimated at about 40% accuracy, it’s still a great auxiliary for capturing quick notes or running a search using key-words (never before possible), and will continue to improve as the technology keeps advancing.

Visual voicemail is available on most platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Win 7, and can be purchased as a value added service from your cellular provider. But if you’re already shopping around for a hosted PBX solution, it’s also included for free with Synclio’s virtual PBX, so you might as well hit two birds with one stone and keep those few extra bucks in your pocket, right where they belong.

(Note: no animals were harmed during writing of this article)

Labels: android visual voicemail, benefits of visual voicemail, business, iOS visual voicemail, phone system, telecommunications, virtual PBX, voip, what is visual voicemail, windows mobile visual voicemail

Let Your IVR Greet Clients with a Unique Mother’s Day Greeting This Coming Sunday!

Good customer service starts with a personal touch—small things that go a long way. It’s an indication that you’ve taken a moment out of your busy day to take notice of something different. That you are aware. That you care.

Different is special—and who doesn’t like special?

That’s why we love national holidays.

Now, you might think that an automated answering service is incapable of a ‘personal touch’—but that would be like saying that robots are incapable of feelings, and anyone who’s seen Spielberg’s A.I. knows better!

So here’s how your very own artificial intelligence (aka Auto Attendant) can respond in an intimate manner (with just a helpful nudge on your part):

Most virtual PBX systems should let you record and maintain a library of customized greetings to feed your IVR. So if you were to prepare a special message in advance, you could simply switch over to it when the appropriate day arrived—and that’s that. Simple, isn’t’ it?

You can prepare as many greetings as you like and be ready to meet any occasion.

It’s a small effort to show your customers that you care about going that extra mile to make them feel special.

Try it out this coming Mother’s Day!

(April 8^th, just in case you’ve forgotten... don’t worry, we won’t tell ;)

Every mother is sure to smile upon hearing your greeting—and as for the rest of us kids, we’ll have a chance to dart out to the nearest flower store and, breathing a sigh of relief, call to say ‘of course I didn’t forget mom—how could I!’

In both cases, you’ll have a friend for life.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

Labels: business, call, cloud computing, custom greeting, customer service, data center, IT, live answer, mother's day, phone system, technology, virtual IVR, virtual PBX, virtual phone

Use Synclio’s Virtual PBX with a Skype Number

If you’re one of the forward-thinking business owners who’ve already made the switch from traditional landlines and cell phones to Skype but felt the one thing keeping you from true bliss is the inability to integrate a proper phone system—you’ll love what we have to say!

So here it is: you can.

All you’ll need is a Skype online number.

Synclio’s cloud based vitual PBX treats your Skype number just as it would any other landline or cell-phone number, giving you full access to all the awesome features. Now you can reap the benefits of a full-featured PBX while using Skype’s mega low rates and calling plans!

So whether you have completely done away with the major telecoms (and the associated major headaches) or only use Skype to supplement your traditional means of communication, you can now enjoy one powerhouse of a system!

What’s more, with features like Find Me Follow Me and customizable call routing rules, you’ll experience a seamless integration of all your devices—so it’ll truly be YOUR business, anywhere.

To learn more about the common features of a virtual phone system, check out our 'Anatomy of a Virtual Phone System: What’s in it, and why you need it?'

Labels: business, cost saving, IT, phone system, skype, technology, virtual pbx skype number, virtual phone

How Our ‘Find Me/Follow Me’ Service Can Help You Never Miss Another Call

Business never sleeps. As the sun goes down on one market it rises over another—and even on the same street, people seem to be ticking to a completely different set of biological clocks.

To stay competitive in this modern world, businessmen have long realized that the traditional idea of ‘regular operating hours’ no longer applies. So the challenge, especially to smaller players who cannot afford after-hours staff, has become that of coping with ‘irregular operating hours’.

This is still more challenging if your line of work requires frequent travel.

For instance, let’s say that you’re an electrician in business with another partner. You don’t want to miss any calls—but neither of you can become a permanent fixture in the office.

You could hire a receptionist—but that’s an extra salary to pay, and it’s not like the phone is constantly going off the hook...you simply want to be there when it does.

Another option would be to include your mobile phone numbers in all your ads—but consider that you may not want to make your personal phone numbers public, and getting another set of business phones is again running a significant expense. Then, you also want to avoid giving the impression of a disjointed operation (a first impression is only made once) and a single contact number just looks so more professional.

Find Me/Follow Me is a service offered in conjuncture with a virtual phone system and a powerful tool in this kind of situation.

Basically, it lets you keep all your phone numbers—office, mobile, home, etc—under your profile. Then, whenever a call is destined for you, the system would automatically start dialing every number in succession until you are reached (or route it to your voicemail if you chose not to answer).

So whether you’re out on a site, at home, or in the office, you’ll always be able to take the call. Moreover, since the call is placed to the company’s main line and the subsequent rerouting is performed within the system, none of your personal contact numbers will be revealed in the process, and the public will always be dealing with a single number.

This protects your privacy and promotes your company's brand-recognition!

A virtual IVR has many additional features to let you fully control the way calls are handled by the automated system, thereby helping you find that elusive balance between work and personal life.

The Find Me Follow Me service, as part of our virtual phone system, provides a reliable, cost effective call handling solution that will ensure you'll never miss another call—keeping both you and your customers happy!

To learn more about the features of a virtual phone system, check out: ‘Anatomy of a Virtual Phone System: What’s in it, and Why You Need It?’

Labels: asterisk, business, call routing, cloud computing, cost saving, customer service, find me follow me service, IT, phone system, technology, virtual IVR, virtual PBX, virtual phone, voicemail