A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

If you’ve been at a campground or small convenience store, you may have unknowingly purchased goods that were distributed by Travado. Travado connects companies with small, special market retailers, providing food, beverages, ice cream, toys, sundries and various other convenience products at wholesale prices.

But with growth always comes challenges.

In Travado’s case, the challenge was to maintain the high level of customer service that helped it grow—and helps it keep growing. Travado employs 20 people. Most of them work in the company’s Lakewood, Co. headquarters, but some workers were dispersed in remote locations. Travado was using a legacy phone system, but it just didn’t meet the needs of remote employees. What’s more, the legacy phone system was expensive and difficult to manage.

After experiencing ongoing problems with the legacy system, Travado decided to move to a business class phone system that would help it operate more efficiently. Travado President and CEO Bobby Martyna turned to RingCentral for help. The solution: RingCentral Office virtual office phone system, a scalable solution that grows with the company’s employee base.

“We selected RingCentral because it was easy to set up, very flexible, and offered a rich array of functions and features to enhance our company communications,” Martyna says. “In addition, as a growing company we needed a professional business class system that not only met our short term needs but that would grow with us. Our old provider did not offer the services we needed and the outages were painful for a company trying to establish a solid reputation for service.”

Today, all of Travado’s employees use RingCentral and the pre-configured full featured phones, which include caller ID, call hold, mute, speaker phone and other features. The company also taps into features like call logs, which offer a complete record of every inbound and outbound call and fax. The call logs make way for Travado to produce and analyze customer interaction reports. Travado is also using the call recording feature in its employee training efforts.

“As we grow, our business efficiency is a key area of focus and RingCentral is a big part of that,” Martyna says. “The capabilities and features included in the virtual office phone system such as call logs, call recording and voice mail to email allow us to leverage our communication systems to enhance our customer service and efficiency.”

RingCentral isn’t the only virtual PBX game in town, but it is a reputable service that’s winning plenty of customers. With results like these, it’s worth checking out RingCentral.

Hurricane Earl has come and gone, but other tropical storms are on the horizon and any one of them could turn into a hurricane in the weeks ahead.

VoiceNation is urging businesses to prepare for business interruptions. The virtual PBX provider just announced the results of a survey that exposed the shortfalls in most companies’ disaster recovery planning as it relates to voice communications.

The result: Many companies are setting themselves up for financial loss in the wake of a hurricane, potential terrorism, pandemics, and other threats.

According to the study, 95 percent of companies agree there is a critical need for business continuity planning for voice communications, yet only 2 percent confirmed they had a plan. What’s more, 100 percent of respondents said their company’s day-to-day operations would be interrupted if their phones were shut down for an extended period.

VoiceNation President Jay Reeder recommends companies reevaluate their communication plans for natural disasters. Reeder points to the following lessons businesses can learn from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

• Create secondary and even third-order alternatives for critical communication systems such as phones, e-mail and Web sites.
• Establish a publicized toll-free number to ease the strain on employees of determining whether they need to go to work as usual, stay at home or leave for remote work locations immediately.
• Arrange for a live answering service to take messages for the business or offer trained operators to answer calls and provide updates to employees during an evacuation.
• Provide on-line employee registration to facilitate locating dispersed staff.
• Consider fax-to-email or fax server back up plans.
• Contract for remote or live answering assistance to continue to assist customers with questions or orders by phone while the company regroup.

“Companies can’t afford not to back up their voice services. Many don’t realize how affordable it is,” Reeder says. “VoiceNation has most clients completely protected in about a week. Our simple but robust system can handle everything from rerouting calls to your employees to backing up incoming fax orders or sending all voicemail to email. Today’s technology can take care of your communication needs in a crisis.”

If you want more information about hurricane-proofing your business, visit VoiceNation’s article section and read the article, “Nine Ways to Hurricane Proof Your Business.” And find out why VoiceNation’s disaster recovery clients include FEMA, AIG, and Time Warner Cable.

Talk about aggressive. eVoice is throwing down the virtual office gauntlet with an offer that you may not be able to afford to refuse. eVoice is offering new customers a six-month trial on its virtual numbers services. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in the virtual office or virtual receptionist industry.

eVoice is also working to make sure consumers know how simple it is to use virtual office technologies. The company has developed a new guided tour video that shows you, step by step, how to set up a local or toll-free number. If that’s not enough, eVoice is even offering personalized U.S.-based VIP set up support for new accounts during the trial period. What more could you ask for? Seriously. This is a deal worth exploring.

“Our new tutorial video demonstrates why eVoice has become the virtual phone service of choice for so many small business owners today,” says Mike Pugh, vice president of Marketing for j2 Global Communications, the parent company of eVoice. “Besides the six-month free trial and affordable monthly plans, the service can be quickly and easily configured and put to use.”

Pugh promises that any customer can visit eVoice.com and  have a working business phone number with advanced features normally found on much more expensive, sophisticated systems within minutes. Those are strong words. Let’s find out how the whole virtual office phone system works:

1. Select a local or toll-free number.
2. Customize where calls to that number will ring, such as home, office, or cell phone. You can choose up to five phones.
3. Send the calls to all designated phones at once, or sequentially one at a time until someone answers. This way, you are less likely to miss important calls and you don’t have to hand out your personal number.

What do callers hear? If you don’t answer, callers are greeted by an auto attendant with a customized and professionally recorded greeting. The auto attendant instructs calls to press numbers that coincide with the departments you set up. For example, they may press 1 for sales or 2 for customer service. Or maybe they press 1 for Jane Smith and 2 for John Doe. You get the idea. You can set up each extension to ring any designated phone number. And here’s a cool feature: if a caller leaves a message, the voicemail is transcribed and e-mailed to you.

Finally, don’t forget to ask about the exclusive VIP set up when you sign up for your six-month free trial. The company’s exclusive VIP setup and support offers customers who sign up for second and third tier plans with “white glove” treatment during setup. After you sign up, an eVoice representative will call you to walk you through each aspect of account setup. They leave you with a “thanks” and an 800 number for 24/7 direct access to a U.S.-based eVoice customer service representative.