A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

That headline should grab your attention. Even if your company isn’t big enough to spend $15,000 a month in phone expenses—much less save $15,000 a month—Virtual PBX offers a solution that can probably save your company money on its communications needs.

But let’s look at this magnanimous example. Jack Rabbit is an emergency roadside assistance company stranded motorists can call for help. Given the emergency status of the call, efficient response is vital to client satisfaction. So it says a lot about the reliability of Virtual PBX that Jack Rabbit would trust this hosted service to begin with.

I can understand why Jack Rabbit was willing to make the move. The system it was using forced staff to manually forward hundreds of calls a day. That takes time and it makes customer service less efficient. By switching to Virtual PBX, Jack Rabbit improved the response times of its 30 dispatchers by eliminating that manual forwarding. It’s just that simple.

A Seamless Virtual PBX Transition
I thought it was interesting that Jack Rabbit didn’t just go online to look for a better solution for its PBX needs. The company hired a technology expert named James Yates to help it find a more cost-effective, client-efficient system. After understanding Jack Rabbit’s needs, Yates did a market study and recommended Virtual PBX.

“Jack Rabbit USA is the perfect example of a dispersed workforce,” says Yates, owner of Technology Support Services. “After speaking with Jack Rabbit USA, it became evident that the company needed a low-cost solution that was easy-to-use, didn’t require hours of upkeep and wouldn’t disrupt the workforce. At the end of the day, the only provider that fit the bill was Virtual PBX.”

Not disrupting the workforce during the transition was also vital. Jack Rabbit couldn’t be unavailable to its customers for even a minute. Once Jack Rabbit subscribed to Virtual PBX, Yates got to work creating a custom phone system for the company.

TrueACD Queuing Benefits
One of the first features Jack Rabbit used was Virtual PBX’s call forwarding technology with TrueACD queuing. TrueACD means inbound calls are automatically routed to the right operator or first available agent. That ultimately translates to shorter call wait times for Jack Rabbit customers calling into the virtual PBX system.

Here’s how: Callers don’t need to know the extension of the person they are trying to reach. What’s more, managers don’t need to spend time entering or changing phone numbers as employee shifts change. TrueACD queues also include presence management and employees log themselves in and out as needed.

“Prior to implementing Virtual PBX’s solution, we had to manually manage hundreds of inbound calls every day, 365 days a year,” says Theodore Kaufman, CEO of Jack Rabbit USA. “After setting up our Virtual PBX service, we realized a savings of $15,000 a month and had access to built-in features such as call-forwarding, TrueACD queuing and Web-based management that really helped improve how we did business.”

First they went to Facebook, then YouTube—and now Twitter.

AnswerFirst Communications, a virtual receptionist, answering and messaging services firm headquartered in Tampa, Fla., has launched a Twitter account to interact with customers. AnswerFirst is tweeting status updates, special promotions, general business tips and other information to its followers. Twitter has more than 80 million users at the time of this writing.

Wait, What’s Twitter?
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening right now.

From a business perspective, Twitter helps organizations of all sizes stay connected to their customers. AnswerFirst is using it to keep customers in the known about its virtual receptionist service.

Companies like Dell have generated millions of dollars in additional revenue from running promotions on Twitter. And Coca-Cola just launched a Promoted Tweet campaign to congratulate the England and U.S. soccer teams. The ad saw 86 million impressions in 24 hours. AnswerFirst isn’t aspiring to Dell- or Coke-like results. The company is just striving to better serve its customers.

Real-Time Communications
Jim Smith, AnswerFirst’s director of Inside Sales, called Twitter a simple yet powerful channel of communication between the company and its clients. Twitter, he says, is easy to use and easily accessible, and the real-time broadcast format is robust.

“If one of our Internet service providers goes down, then we can still update our Twitter account via a mobile phone. This feature allows our IT department to keep our customers informed during transitions or outages,” Smith says.

AnswerFirst has also used its Twitter account to announce breaking news, new services and special promotional rates. Since the majority of AnswerFirst’s client-base consists of business owners or management, the company also tweets business and marketing tips. Smith sees it as a differentiator between AnswerFirst and other virtual receptionist companies.

“We have a lot of remote operators who rely on our infrastructure to do their jobs. We use internal chat and e-mail for communicating with these employees but, we’ve been able to use Twitter for further redundancy and for last minute announcements about network performance or changes,” says James Cass, Director of IT at AnswerFirst. Our employees have found that checking our twitter account is easier and faster than making a phone call.”

Doubtless, that headline got the attention of thrift-minded businesses owners who believe they are paying too much for business calls. The down economy has caused companies large and small to look for ways to save on everything from office space to communications technologies.

Keypoint Communications is stepping in with its approach to cheaper business calls as it strives to compete with the behemoth that is British Telecom. Indeed, Keypoint is throwing down the virtual PBX gauntlet. Listen to the aggressive language the company uses in its press materials:

“Unfortunately for everybody else in the cheaper business calls market, Keypoint are out for blood—and they’ve got it, with the kind of price tariff and extras list that must have been the worst nightmare of every fat cat executive in the communications world for years. The model is simple. Let’s be honest, said Keypoint—and they were. The result is a cheaper business calls tariff that looks, at first, like a con—until one inspects it closer and realizes that there is actually no hidden cost, no catch, no nothing except what one first read.”

Keystone’s Ala Carte Approach
OK, so let’s take a closer look at Keystone’s bold promises and how the company is backing them up. For starters, Keystone is making cheaper business calls possible by removing the line rental and equipment rental fees. Then there’s the call rate, which is based on a flat per-second charge rather than a minimum of three minutes that larger competitors charge.

Keypoint also offers a virtual PBX service. But the company doesn’t require businesses to include that in a package—it’s just there if they need it. Here’s how it works: A company that chooses a Keypoint virtual PBX line chooses the features the owners think they will actually use—and pays only for those features. A Keypoint virtual PBX comes with no contracts and no pre-packaged services. If the company doesn’t need caller ID, for example, it doesn’t pay for it. Same with call forwarding.

Keypoint concludes, “And that’s why Keypoint’s cheaper business calls tariff is making everyone else’s vPBX packages look virtually criminal. Keypoint Communications and their sister company Cheap Business Calls have developed a new, honest model for business call packages and telephone systems.”

Is Keystone Worth the Risk?
This is a pretty bold way to market. I can only assume that Keystone is bringing a new model to market that’s flying in the face of British Telecom. Of course, Keystone doesn’t have the reputation or credibility British Telecom has offered for decades.

Large companies may not feel comfortable trusting a relatively new player in market with their important business calls. But smaller companies just might be willing to take the chance for the promise of cheaper business calls. Apparently, the cost is indeed much lower. We’ll have to see if British Telecom responds with some new packages.

Is anyone using Keystone’s services? If so, let us know about your personal experience, especially with the virtual PBX side.

OnState Communications just rolled out the latest iteration of its Software-as-a-Service virtual call center and virtual PBX solution.

The Spring ’10 release promises greater visibility and control with visual analytics, network-based call recording functionality and agent productivity improvements. If your growing operation is looking for a virtual call center solution that you can “rent”—and one that comes with plenty of bells and whistles, OnState is worth consideration.

Exploring admin insights
OnState just added graphical elements to its management dashboards. The purpose is to make it easier for administrators and supervisors to monitor call center agent performance and productivity. Managers can now rely on color-coded Gnatt charts to determine call center responsiveness more quickly. The Spring ’10 update also offers visual analytics to help managers assess service levels and evaluate agent performance more quickly so they can make any necessary adjustments to improve customer service.

Better reporting and control
OnState also improved its real-time and historical reports. Administrators now have more visibility into overall call center performance and agent productivity. For example, summary and detail level reports offer information that aims to help managers evaluate staffing levels and service quality. The new version also let admins log off a home-based agent who forgot to sign off at the end of a shift or log in an on-duty agent who has been on break for too long.

Network recording diversity
OnState’s latest version lets you record and store calls using any type of device, from mobile phones to SIP phones to Internet phones, and, of course, landlines. OnState lets you connect with cloud-based services to cost-effectively store the data with companies like Amazon, Salesforce or Google.

Agent usability improvements
Finally, the agents get some bells and whistles, too. Call center agents can work with a wider variety of devices and communication and collaboration clients, including the POTS phone, PBX phone, mobile handsets, SIP endpoints, Skype, GoogleTalk. That means a field-based sales rep may choose to use a PBX phone when in the office, a mobile phone while on the road, and a POTS phone when working from home.

It’s one thing to market “award-winning virtual PBX service.” It’s quite another thing to be an award-winning virtual PBX service.

Virtual PBX is boasting that distinction for the second year in a row. Virtual PBX won the 2010 Best of San Jose Award in the Telecommunications Services category. The annual award is offered by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA), a New York City-based organization that works to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising. The USCA saw fit to hand it to Virtual PBX for two straight years.

It seems the chances of Virtual PBX taking this award home two years in a row was less likely than the Los Angeles Lakers winning two NBA titles in a row. According to USCA, only 1.4 percent of 2010 award recipients across the country won the award two consecutive years.

This award is a colorful feather in Virtual PBX’s cap. The award, which recognizes “outstanding local businesses” across the country that have achieved “exceptional marketing success,” gives Virtual PBX even more credibility than it already has. USCA is also recognizing Virtual PBX has a company that enhances the “positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.”

Virtual PBX offers service with no contracts, no startup fees and no cancellation fees. You can get into an entry-level program for just $9.99 a month. That gets you five extensions and 100 minutes. There are additional plans, all the way up to a VPBX-50 plan for $94.99 a month, which offers 50 extensions and 2,000 minutes. All the plans offer a free trial, so you take no risk in trying this bona-fide award-winning service.

Nothing like a prosperous customer to make you look good. RingCentral is putting Profit Sense Innovations, a small business development firm—and one of its customers—in the spotlight.

As RingCentral tells the story, Profit Sense Innovations relies on a distributed workforce of nearly 30 people to offer services to its business customers from coast to coast—and that distributed workforce relies on the telephone to provide those services.

Profit Sense Innovations uses RingCentral Office as the backbone of its communications system. The cloud-based virtual PBX system lets the company scale up or down as needed as it expands or contracts its staff. But Profit Sense Innovations isn’t contracting by any means. With so many new business start-ups, the company is growing.

“Because most of our business is done on the telephone, communications is essential to our business. Poor quality communication directly impacts our revenues,” says Jerry Khemraj, owner of Profit Sense Innovations. “With RingCentral Office, we never have to watch the meter and we have so many features that surpass what you would expect from a Fortune 500 phone system. The small business phone system is easy to set up and use, no technical wizardry required, and we can plug the phone in wherever we are and be in business.”

What are those features you would expect from a Fortune 500 phone system? One of them is the ability to place calls from any phone using the office number ID. Another is unlimited nationwide calling and faxing. RingCentral Office also offers end-to-end call handling control.  You can use RingCentral IP phones or your existing phones and fax machines. Customers never get a busy signal because RingCentral answers all calls and faxes. You also get multiple local and toll-free numbers. The list of features in this virtual PBX system goes on and one.

Profit Sense Innovations couldn’t use a legacy on-premise office phone system if it wanted to. Not because of the cost, even though it is much more costly than the virtual PBX system the company uses today. But rather because the legacy on-premise phone system couldn’t deal with multiple locations effectively. RingCentral specializes is virtual PBX systems for the distributed workforce.

“Our clients are able to call a single number and RingCentral Office can connect them with any staff member, independent of where they are located, and even to their mobile phones. This enables us to provide a professional, consistent service no matter where the call is placed or answered,” says Khemraj. “In addition, as our firm grows, I can instantly add employee extensions without any technical help. RingCentral Office makes running a distributed business so much easier—I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

OfficePioneer may not be a virtual office industry pioneer, but it’s blazing a new trail in the virtual office space.

OfficePioneer bills itself as a “one stop” solution to saving your small to medium-sized business or start-up time and money by outsourcing your otherwise costly, administrative burdens.  The company combines essential virtual office solutions, including a live receptionist, virtual assistants, accounting and payroll, and local meeting rooms, addresses and offices.

OfficePioneer lets you “rent” a live receptionist and virtual assistant at prices starting at $99 a month. That gets you one phone number, 50 live minutes, fax-to-e-mail service and voice-to-email service. All packages include a personalized company profile, a  live receptionist from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, live call screening, transfer and forwarding, among a myriad of other call features. Your live receptionist will also schedule meetings and appointments and process orders. You can track it all through an online dashboard.

OfficePioneer has partnered with business centers around the country to build a network of luxury meeting rooms and day offices you can use while you travel. With this network, you can tap into a prestigious business location at a reputable serviced office facility when you need to. But if you just need a virtual office locally, OfficePioneer has you covered. Like many virtual office providers, you can get a prestigious business address, business directory listing with lobby greeters, and mail and package reception.

What OfficePioneer offers that most virtual office companies don’t is accounting and payroll services. I found this especially intriguing. The company has paperless accounting and payroll service plans starting at just $29 a month. That’s so affordable I might actually try it out. OfficePioneer has a team of certified bookkeepers and public accountants that can do your books professionally—maybe better than you can. OfficePioneer has certifications from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers and is also an Intuit Certified ProAdvisor.

If you want to check it out for yourself, you can opt for a 30-day free trial of OfficePioneer’s live receptionist service. OfficePioneer offers a quality service guarantee that makes getting started on the program fairly risk free. The only thing you’ll invest is a little time setting up the system for your preferences. I write about a lot of virtual office providers. OfficePioneer is one of the most innovative new upstarts in the virtual office space that I’ve seen in some time.

In a world where social media is becoming more dominant—and in an industry where workers are virtual by nature—it only makes sense for a company like AnswerFirst Communications to turn to YouTube to educate clients on its products.

AnswerFirst Communications, a telephone answering service that offers virtual receptionists and contact center solutions, just rolled out its own YouTube channel to help its clients and potential clients better understand how to use its client web interface.

Essentially, AnswerFirst offers a free Client Web Access (CWA) account to every answering service, messaging service, call center and virtual receptionist customer. The CWA lets clients log in to a secure environment where they can see real-time account data within the browser. Clients can pick up their messages, check invoices, make changes to their virtual receptionist accounts and more.

Streamlining Virtual Receptionists
Jim Smith, AnswerFirst’s Director of Inside Sales, says although the CWA interface is user-friendly, the company doesn’t want to limit usability by not providing clear and concise instructional materials. AnswerFirst plans to release several videos each month that educate consumers on how to use the new functionality in evolving products.

“Using screen capture software we have created a series of videos that are instructional walkthroughs of the most useful features of CWA. The video tutorials are available from within CWA as well as on our AnswerFirst YouTube channel,” Smith says.

“We launched the YouTube channel for the sole purpose of featuring our CWA tutorial videos because YouTube is easily accessible to users around the globe and it is integrated with Google’s search engine which makes it easier for users to find the videos.”

Where’s the YouTube Channel?
AnswerFirst clients seem to be happy with the new video tutorials.

Steve Smith, owner of AAA Appliance Services, says he’s used CWA to review his invoices since he first set-up his AnswerFirst account. But, he adds, he had no idea he could listen to all of his calls until he browsed AnswerFirst’s YouTube channel and saw a video. He says, “I’m looking forward to using the AnswerFirst YouTube channel more and learning more about the features of Client Web Access.”

What’s interesting to me is that AnswerFirst didn’t offer the URL to its YouTube channel. I typed AnswerFirst into YouTube and found one video that I wasn’t sure was really the right channel. On Google, I typed in “AnswerFirst YouTube channel” and stumbled on this URL. I thought perhaps it was a competitor because they didn’t use their brand name in the URL. But it is in fact the channel. You can visit it here to check it out for yourself. It’s pretty cool for a virtual receptionist company to take this step. Expect copycats.

Barrister Executive Suites is making headlines in the Pasadena Star-News.

Staff Writer Kevin Smith dives into the concept of virtual offices that let businesses operate, as he writes it, “leaner and meaner.” After introducing the concept, he points directly to Barrister as a prime example in the local area.

Like other executive suites operators, Barrister operates virtual office space in Pasadena and lets customers rent day offices or meeting rooms on demand. Barrister calls its virtual office space “Business Identity Packages.”

“Virtual offices are set up for businesses that need a presence within a market and access to a professional environment,” Dorthy Bright, president of Barrister, told the Pasadena Star-News. “As far as our client base goes, it could be people who have a home-based business or maybe a company that needs a satellite office.”

Barrister’s Pasadena virtual offices come in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum packages. The Bronze package is $100 a month and includes a prestigious business address, access to office equipment, a lobby listing in the building directory, handling of incoming mail, fax and packages, and access to common area services during business hours.

Barrister’s Platinum package runs $350 a month and includes everything in the Bronze package, plus a professional virtual receptionist and personalized telephone answering and access to fully furnished private office space for 12 hours a month.

Barrister doesn’t just run virtual office programs in Pasadena. The company has 21 locations across Southern California, including cities like Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Santa Monica and San Diego. Barrister is definitely one of the most reputable executive suites companies and virtual office providers in the industry.

The mobile apps craze has made its way to the virtual office world.

Phone.com just rolled out two mobile apps that make its Virtual Office service accessible from iPhones and Android devices. Both apps are free and ready for download.

This is great news for road warriors or anyone who spends a lot of time out of the office but still needs to tap into a comprehensive communications service while on the run. It’s also a competitive differentiator for Phone.com, at least until another virtual office provider makes its mobile app move.

“We surveyed our customers to discover what they are looking for in a mobile app, and more than 65 percent told us that they’d like to mask their mobile phone number and use their Phone.com virtual phone number from their mobile devices,” says Ari Rabban, Phone.com CEO. “This capability took priority over saving mobile phone minutes or roaming charges.”

The Android App
The Phone.com Mobile Office app extends office phone on Android-powered devices like the HTC EVO 4G, the Motorola Droid or the HTC Incredible. Your Phone.com number appears as the Caller ID, keeping the mobile number private.

With the app, you can make and receive calls, send and receive text messages, listen to, read and manage your Phone.com account voicemail, view received faxes, review call history, block calls from unwanted or unidentified numbers, click and connect to their private conference call bridge and more.

The iPhone App
Meanwhile, Phone.com Mobile VoIP for the iPhone lets your use your Phone.com Virtual Office account from an iPhone to place VoIP-based calls using either a Wi-Fi or 3G data connection. You can also tap into the power of the app to bypass phone providers and save minutes on your calling plan.

You can download the Android app in the Android marketplace and use it with any Phone.com plan. The Mobile VoIP app is available from Apple’s App Store.  Phone.com voice plans start at $4.88 a month while Virtual Office plans start at $9.88 a month.