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

Weatherproof Your Business: Take Shelter from the Storm in the Cloud

So starts an article dated April 29^th 2011 on the international news site France 24.

There can no longer be any doubt that we have entered an era of increasingly volatile weather conditions. The tsunami that has wrecked havoc across the island of Japan just last month and the recent ‘spate of tornadoes’ (as aptly put by the author) are just the latest affirmations of a definite global climate trend.

Just imagine the immediacy when such a misfortune strikes. Natural disasters are unruly beasts, and even modern climatologists with all their sophisticated knowledge and equipment are often thunderstruck by their sudden onslaughts. Sometimes the best they can do is give us mere days—if not hours—of notice.

If, god forbid, such mad winds started blowing in your neck of the woods, you’d throw your family in a car and get the hell out of there—as far and as fast as you could!

Naturally, your first concern is to protect yourself and your loved ones.

But once the worst of it has passed and only wreckages remain, how would you figure in the aftermath?

Your house may have been damaged or destroyed. Perhaps even your office. Any equipment and infrastructure you may have owned have likely taken a dip and didn’t take well to swimming. Your insurance may or may not cover the damages—depending on how well you’ve read the fine print—but even if it did, it would take weeks, months even, to get everything back on track.

Now, it’s bad enough to suffer a loss of your physical possessions, but imagine losing your business too, and with it your means of rebuilding your lost wealth...

You’d obviously find consolation in the fact you and your family have made it out with your skins. You’d tell yourself that you can always start fresh—in a different town, different place. That you still have your skills, your years of experience, perhaps even some of that old youth... But deep down inside, a single question will be wrenching your guts out: “Could I not have done anything better?”

You see, as human beings we have the gift of foresight, and therefore the privilege of preparing for the unexpected. To decide, when bad news come lashing at our doors, if we’d have the ability to act, or only to react.

In some situation, only a reaction is possible—this is where we need to act well in advance to protect ourselves. That’s why you don’t keep all of your money in a single place, or even in a single currency.

Sometimes still, the best we can possibly do is only curb the damage—limit what and how much can be lost—and this is where cloud computing becomes invaluable.

Think about it: if most of your business was powered up in the cloud rather than from your office it would have been infinitely easier for you to bounce back up on your feet following such catastrophe. Sure, your physical possessions would’ve suffered a beating—but at least you’d still have the ability to earn a living. Wealth can be rebuilt. That’s why your first concern is for your life, and the second is for your livelihood.

Moreover, being a business owner, you’d probably have the foresight to buy insurance. So most of the assets you’ve owned will be reclaimed in value.

The main concern is therefore not for any assets owned by your business, but rather for your business itself. Every day your service remains down is a day that sets you back and gives your competitors an advantage. Your customers might tolerate a reasonable interruption—but not a prolonged shutdown.

So it’s crucial to get your business back up and running as quickly as possible. It should be apparent how the cloud can give you an advantage: if most of your business depended on your self-owned infrastructure and your infrastructure went up in smoke—you’d be out of luck. However, if the main aspects of your business, such as data storage and communications, were powered from the cloud—the most you might have to do is to buy a new laptop (assuming your old one got damaged) and you’d be back in business!

At this point you might wonder ‘but hey, if my infrastructure can be damaged by a natural disaster, who says theirs can’t?’

This is a legitimate concern, and here is a simple answer:

The following video shows the Google Data Center where Synclio, for instance, host their servers. Have a good look and listen. If, watching this presentation, you feel that your infrastructure security is on par with theirs, you probably don’t need it. But Google spent $2.3 BILLION building this state of the art facility—the most advanced of its kind. I somehow doubt that your basement can be a match (Unless, of course, you are Bill Gates—then I’d probably be happy with my basement too)

So just in case all this doomsday talk has spoiled your appetite, take a look out the window for a moment, sip on that tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and rejoice in the pleasant sunshine. Thankfully, we’ve only been talking 'what ifs'. But remember that the bright sun can just as quickly be covered by a passing cloud, and it’s always better to be prepared.

To quote Nathan Muir from the movie ‘Spy Games’: “When did Noah build the ark Gladys? Before the storm.”

Labels: cloud computing, data center, data protection, google, IT, phone system, security, severe weather, technology, tornado, tsunami, virtual PBX, virtual phone, web management

Health Tip of the Week: Swap Your Cup-of-Joe for a Cuppa 'Gin'-seng

Running a business is a consuming affair that will run you down if you can’t replenish fast enough. Chances are, in order to keep ahead of the race, you’re hooked up to a life-support of highly caffeinated drinks and energy bars.

But the tricky thing with your favorite cup of Joe, apart from the roller-coaster plunge that follows the 'high' (and those stained teeth that mess up your smile), is that the effect tends to weaken if consumed regularly.

In other words, you’ll do much better having that crisp dark roast when you really need it rather than every morning with your runny eggs.

Stuffing those sugar bars isn't really advancing your cause either. Sure, they may keep your energy up and your stomach settled—but the insulin spike is again followed by a steep crush, and what you don’t feel now in your stomach you’ll later find in your hips.

So if you want to cut back on those visits to your dentist and the quarterly trips to your local Old Navy outlet, here's a great alternative.

American Ginseng (or Panax quinquefolius) is a root that’s been used by the Chinese for centuries. Its abilities to replenish the adrenal glands, reduce stress, and counteract fatigue have been thoroughly documented by both western clinical studies and anecdotal evidence.

It can be prepared and consumed in different forms, but most commonly dried and flaked or crashed and brewed in tea. A pinch-full of 5-7 flakes will reignite your energy in minutes and keep you up and ticking like that pink Energizer Bunny—only without the side-effects of crushes, mental-haze, or those silly ears.

American Ginseng does have a tendency to cool the body slightly. If you find this gives you a discomfort, you might prefer to use its cousin, Red Ginseng (Panax ginseng), which shares the same potent attributes without the cooling effects.

Here’s to keeping healthy while growing wealthy!

Labels: business, cloud computing, coffee, energy, fatigue, ginseng, health, sugar, technology, virtual PBX, virtual phone

Know Your Leads: A Look at How Call Stats Can Help Improve Your Marketing Performance

Up till now, we’ve been mostly yapping about virtual PBX systems in general terms. But perhaps it’s time to get a bit more specific and examine individual features up close. Let’s start with something exotic, like the ability to view call stats.

Not unlike Clark Kent, this little feature might appear unimpressive on first sight (what’s with that dorky outfit and those square glasses)—but just throw it into the ring and see what happens.

That's because some things show their value only in action.

So here’s a practical scenario that will flush out any hidden superpowers.

Your Marketing Efforts

Let’s say you own a small business. Following the age-old advice, you've split your precious marketing eggs between several baskets: two local papers (the ‘Morning Sun’ and the ‘Faraway Star’), your website, and lastly, in a fit of creativity (or perhaps desperation) you decided to put up an ad on your local Craigslist Classifieds. 'What the heck’—it’s free, right?

Now comes the waiting game...

Your Dilemma

So while we sit here waiting for the phone to start going off the hook, why not ponder a philosophical question: wouldn’t it be nice to know just how many leads each of those platform generated?

I mean, if you only have one business number (and included this same phone number in all four places, how will you tell where each caller got whiff of you and your business?

Sure, you could start surveying your prospective clients. But that double-edged nuisance is going to slide right through your time and their patience—not the best way to get off to a good start...

Anything else?

You could perhaps try checking how many people ‘clicked’ on the ‘Contact us’ link on your website—but that doesn’t necessarily mean they all proceeded to call you, and it sure isn’t going to help you glean any information about the other three...

Fair to say, this is as far as your little foray into statistics is likely to get.

And here’s how Synclio can help you take it a step further:

Phone Call Number Tracking with Goolgle Analytics

First, Synclio gives you the ability to port numbers. ‘Porting’ numbers means that when a number is called the call is instantaneously redirected to a different number. Ever changed providers and had your calls follow you? That’s exactly it!

(Just don’t ask us how it’s done—we’ll call it ‘magic’)

Then, Synclio also lets you select as many local and toll-free phone numbers as you need.

Now let’s connect the dots.

Suppose you’ll assign a different phone number to each ad you've placed and port all four numbers to your one business line... You’ll still be receiving and answering calls on your phone just as you normally would, but in the background—magic will be happening!

When the day is done and you’ve signed up all those new customers, you’ll now be able to simply kick back, pull up your laptop, and watch as Synclio’s think-o-matic-extraordinaire (powered by Google Analytics) reveals just how many calls were placed to each of the numbers you have ported.

The Bottom Line

So even if you’ve been paying a hefty fee to see your ads prominently featured in the Morning Sun and the Faraway Star, you may learn from this little experiment that the bulk of callers actually followed your electronic bread-crumbs-trail via the freebie Craigslist.

Going to reshuffle your marketing eggs now? You betcha!

This is just one of the ways viewing call stats can help improve your business strategy and marketing performance.

And it teaches us never to judge a man or a feature by their outfit—at least not before they've had a chance to take it off and kick some @#$!

09/19/11 Edited to adjust spelling and update information.

Labels: business, call, call stats, cloud computing, how to improve marketing performance, leads, marketing, porting, statistics, technology, virtual PBX, virtual phone

Don’t Go Reinventing the Wheel... Here's Why Building a Physical Phone System is a Bad Idea.

So you’re thinking of putting together a physical phone system. Good. Let’s try something for a minute. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Count to ten.

Still seem like a good idea?

Ok, read on then.

It may have been the norm in the old days to have your hand in everything: grow your own food, raise your own beef, build your own house and even cut your own hair. But not too long ago a little something called the Industrial Revolution took place. That pretty much changed all of it.

Adam Smith, for instance, had observed that a worker trained in making nails yielded a far greater quota than a man uninitiated in the fine art of nail-making. This was a process he had identified as the division of labor, or specialization, and argued that a man becomes far more productive when his time, energy, and resources are directed in a single endeavor.

So let’s see how it applies to the question at hand.

You’re running a business. That’s your niche. If it’s a small business, chances are you’re already wearing more than a few hats.

Do you really want to add another with a small ‘IT’ logo to your wardrobe?

Let’s look at it from a Cost vs. Value perspective, dear to the heart of any entrepreneur.

You might have read a clever article about some open source PBX product now available for free download. Then recalled how, flipping through the flyer of a local electronics store, you had noted the rock-bottom prices of hardware components. Your little number-crunching machine then went on to put two plus two together—and next you were in your car driving towards the nearest Tigerdirect outlet, ready to build that sexy phone system you’ve always wanted.

Well, it’s a good thing your wife did some research and sent you this article before you got too far, because here comes a reality check:

A physical phone system is a complex combo of software and hardware equipment that will require, at the very least, proper setup, configuration, and maintenance.

There was only one reason businesses in the past went through the trouble of setting up those clunkers—and that’s because they didn’t really have an alternative.

It’s true that today you can put together an equally robust physical system for a fraction of what it used to take—especially with open source applications—but that doesn’t mean that every 10-year-old and his sister can crack open their piggy-banks and go nuts... That’s because buying the equipment is only half the trouble. Next you need to have everything set up, configured, and installed—a highly involved process.

So your options quickly dwindle down to either taking a crash course in the relevant IT technologies, or (more likely) hiring a professional.

Guess what, the professional has a family to feed, and he didn’t get that nice certificate only to cover a hole in the wall—he got it to bring home some milk. One guess who’s going to be his cow...

But even once everything has been set up, it’s still only half the trouble (no, I didn’t skip simple math at school). Like a brand new house, once it’s been built, the darn thing still has to be maintained. Go see any homeowner after his first winter to find out if he’s still wearing that picture-perfect smile.

Equipment fails, software gets corrupted, and even when everything seems to be sailing smoothly, the whole thing needs to be periodically updated and upgraded. So if you thought you’ve seen the last of that ‘professional’ with the first visit, be prepared to find yourself signing a long-term contract and feeding the calves on a regular basis.

So why not spare yourself the pain and go with a more streamlined solution? After all, you didn’t lay down infrastructure when you needed your first land-line, or opened a hairdressing salon to get your hair cut—you simply purchased a service. Why start doing things differently?

As for value, a virtual PBX gives you all the features you’d find in a physical one (and more) with the added freedom of the web, for a single low monthly fee.

This has ‘Smart Business ’ written all over it.

You must be good at what you do, but virtual phone systems is our niche. So why not prove the father of capitalism right yet again and start trading?

For more information about the benefit of going virtual, check out: ‘5 Reasons Virtual Systems are Taking Over the Physical World’.

And for a breakdown of most features you’re likely to encounter, try our last post: ‘Anatomy of a Virtual Phone System: What’s In It, and Why You Need It’.

Labels: asterisk, business, call, cloud computing, devision of labor, IT, open source, phone system, specialization, technology, virtual PBX, virtual phone

Tired of Playing Phone-Tag with your Customers? A Virtual Phone System is a Whole New Game!

We all know how it goes. They call you. You call back. They leave a message. You record a voicemail. And round and round you go. This may have been fun as kids, but by now the whole thing must start feeling a bit juvenile...

If you’re ready to leave the kiddie table and come sit with the grownups, we’ve got a whole new game for you.

It’s called A Virtual Phone System.

Chances are, just hearing the words ‘Phone System’ conjures hellish visions of mega-expensive hardware and extortionistic setup fees threatening to leave both you and your spouse without an undergarment. But before you start sweating off your Calvin-Kleins, let it be said that technological advances over the past decade have taken the entire field to a whole a new level, and that today’s virtual systems are a far-cry from those old clunkers that got you all worried about her Victoria's Secrets.

(You may want to check the article ‘A Fortune 500 Customer Calling Experience that Won’t Cost your Company a Fortune’ for some background on what makes virtual PBX phone systems so cost-effective.)

But even though decidedly cheaper, a virtual PBX packs all the features you’ve grown to expect from their physical granddaddies—and more. Now let’s see how these can help you do away with that old phone-tag routine.

For starters, a virtual IVR (Interactive Voice Response) ensures that your customers get an answer 24/7 and immediately transferred to the right department. This beats getting that perpetual ringing tone or coming to a heads-on collision with some general voicemail.

The ability to review detailed call-logs by department ensures that no caller goes unchecked, making sticky-pads and tear-out sheets a thing of the past.

Going virtual also means that your system travels with you no matter where you are, so customers can always reach you. You won’t ever worry about letting a sale slip by unnoticed or desperate cries for help go unanswered.

Most providers offer unlimited extensions, so you can use the one landline you already own to outfit your entire team. Some, like Synclio, even offer a Live Answering service for a small additional fee, so when you're feeling a bit overwhelmed or worried that you might not be available to take calls, you can always trust them to give your customers that extra human touch.

These are just a few of the ways a virtual PBX phone system can make child-play a thing of the past, giving you the confidence to join the grownups for a hairy game like Monopoly.

Now let Synclio make you a winner!

Want to learn more? Try our tween articles: '4 Ways a Professional Phone System Can Improve Customer Experience in Your Business' and '4 Ways a Professional Phone System Can Boost Productivity in your Business' for a well rounded view.

Labels: business, call routing, customer service, technology, virtual IVR, virtual PBX, virtual phone