A Better Virtual – USA Virtual Offices

You’ve probably heard of Murphy’s Law. But how does that translate to business calls?

Well, it goes something like this: You’ve been eagerly waiting a phone call that doesn’t come, doesn’t come, and doesn’t come. You finally decide it’s not coming. So you leave your office. You might even forward your office line to your cell phone. Then, wouldn’t you know it, right in the middle of your treadmill jog, the call you’ve been eagerly awaiting comes in—and you can’t take it. You are out of breath and the background noise wouldn’t make a good first impression.

That’s Murphy’s Law.

But it can be double trouble. Since you probably have an office line and a mobile phone line, you could be twice as likely to miss an important call. Imagine the client calling both of your phones and not getting an answer on either one. That can be frustrating. Sure, it could be that you are merely on another line. But that doesn’t make the impression any better.

What’s a small business owner to do? Try a virtual phone system. With a virtual phone system, you can have one number that rings all your phones, either at the same time or in sequence, and give you call management features that will be less likely to frustrate your clients—even if they can’t reach you. Virtual phone systems offer many features, but eVoice has come up with a list of the top 10 must-have virtual phone features that you should consider before choosing a vendor. Here they are:

1. Voicemail Transcriptions: Messages are transcribed to text and sent via email
2. Call Forwarding: Forward calls to any phone, work anywhere at anytime
3. Call Screening: Know who is calling you before you answer the phone
4. Call Transfers: Transfer calls to anyone on your contact list
5. Professional Greetings: Welcome callers with customized, studio quality greetings
6. Multiple Extensions: Create multiple departments or employee extensions, no matter the size of your business
7. Auto Attendant: Give callers a list of options
8. Voicemail: Managed messages online or via the phone
9. Online Management: Manage account features and access call logs online
10. Local or Toll Free Numbers: Enable easy and convenient customer access to a business

What do you think? Are those really the top 10 features?

Some law firms are still resisting the trend toward virtual law offices. Other law firms just aren’t in the know about the many benefits. Still other law firms are running full speed ahead with virtual offices—and attracting heavy hitting attorneys to their ranks.

Case in point: Virtual Law Partners (VLP). The virtual law firm just keeps winning reputable attorney after reputable attorney to its model. The latest addition adds to the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice as Dr. Linda Rost signs on as a partner.

What’s interesting is where Rost came from. Rost left the Silicon Valley office of Ropes & Gray, a high-respected law firm, where she represented clients in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and high tech industries. An attorney of this caliber wouldn’t jump on board the virtual law office trend if it wasn’t bona fide.

“VLP provides clients with the opportunity to obtain high quality legal representation without the high cost of a traditional law firm,” says Rost. “My colleagues at VLP have training and experience to rival that of lawyers at top U.S. firms, and it is wonderful to be part of such an accomplished group.”

Rost is a graduate of Stanford Law School, where she was managing editor of the Stanford Technology Law Review. Prior to her legal career, Rost graduated from the University of Colorado with a double major in Biochemistry and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. She then obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Brandeis University. As a scientist, Rost has worked as a structural molecular biologist, employing extensive computer modeling, as a developmental biologist, and as a chemist, working in natural product isolation.

“I have known and worked with Linda for many years and am thrilled to have her join our growing Intellectual Property practice,” says VLP Practice Leader David Roise. “Linda’s technology background strengthens our already impressive life sciences group, and her experience in patent litigation provides a new and valuable dimension to the services we are able to provide to our clients.”

Virtual Law Practice represents clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. By eliminating central offices and other unnecessary expenses, Virtual Law Practice can  cut its overhead and offer compelling rates. This is one firm to watch—and so is the trend toward virtual law offices.

You’ve heard of virtual receptionists—people who answer the phone in your company name, take messages, and forward calls to whatever telephone you happen to be by at the time. But have you heard of video receptionists?

I hadn’t, until today.

So what in the world is a video receptionist? Simply stated, it’s a virtual receptionist system that performs the duties you would normally pay a full-time employee to do. But instead of taking calls, it greets visitors.

Essentially, the video receptionist system welcomes people who come to your office front lobby—virtually. This is a touch-screen, self-service, employee directory that opens the door to two-way live video communications between visitors and employees.

So just like a virtual receptionist serves as a go between for you and your clients and prospects, a video receptionist serves as a go between for you and your visitors. The idea is to help you make a good first impression without having to pay a live body to sit at a desk all day and do next to nothing.

Rather than installing a bell, buzzer or telephone system at the front desk that visitors have to use to let you know they have arrived, the video receptionist does the greeting for you without completely neglecting the human element.

One of the benefits of the video receptionist is that it never calls in sick. Another benefit is the impression that your company is on the cutting edge of technology. Employees may also feel more secure knowing that there is a video receptionist at the front.

So, much different than a virtual receptionist, but an interesting concept that shows you companies are looking for new ways to get more efficient—virtually.

Virtual PBX bills itself as the inventor of the hosted business phone services business. Now, it’s grabbing bragging rights as the most innovative virtual PBX company in 2010.

Internet Telephony magazine has awarded Virtual PBX its 2010 Product of the Year Award for Virtual PBX Complete, a turnkey hosted IP-PBX business-class phone system designed for small and mid-size businesses.

With Virtual PBX Complete, the company is aiming to set new standards for flexibility, features, price and ease of installation. I haven’t used this service directly, but apparently Internet Telephony magazine’s editors feel it hits the mark.

“The editors of Internet Telephony have verified that Virtual PBX Complete displays quality and innovation plus fills real needs in the marketplace,” says Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, Internet Telephony’s publisher. “I would like to congratulate Virtual PBX for its commitment to advancing IP communication technologies.”

Virtual PBX Complete promises everything a business needs to professional phone support. The service does away with the need to request dial-tone service and other expensive adds-ons from traditional phone providers because it relies on an Internet connection and it’s loaded with features. Virtual PBX Complete ships with a quality VoIP phone and prices that are 40 percent to 80 percent less than your traditional business phone. Plans start at under $10 a month.

Virtual PBX has all the standard features, which I won’t list here. But here are some of the more interesting features:

• Customizable greetings and hold music for different departments
• Automatic call distribution queues
• Call preview and smart caller ID to know who is calling and what they want
• Real-time voicemail monitor and interrupt
• Multi-business support

Have you had any experience with Virtual PBX? We’d love to hear about it in the comment box below.

Virtual assistants aren’t just for small business owners anymore—and they aren’t all human, either.

Indeed, market research firm Gartner predicts that by the end of 2013, at least 15 percent of Fortune 1000 firms will use a virtual assistant to serve up online self-service content for Customer Relationship Management purposes.

Gartner isn’t talking about your traditional virtual assistant, though. The firm is speaking of human-like virtual assistants—an intelligent character on a Web site. You may have seen them. They are animated, talking characters that answer consumer questions in natural language on behalf of the company. It’s all part of the ‘virtual human’ industry.

Entitled, “Virtual Assistant Vendor Landscape 2011,” the Gartner report describes 10 vendors in the virtual human industry that make up 90 percent of the revenue. So far, Gartner estimates about 35 companies provide these services around the world.

Chatbots.org, an online community on humanlike conversation, figures there are about 200 companies, and predicts that number will grow to 600 in three years as smaller companies start to use these human-like virtual assistants for customer service purposes, too.

So what does all this mean for the traditional virtual assistant business? Will virtual assistant companies and entrepreneurial virtual assistants lose out to artificial intelligence? I doubt it, but technologies could advance that make some of the things virtual assistants do obsolete. For example, we’re already seeing emerging technologies for locating restaurants and setting appointments that streamline this task for small business owners.

There are also mechanical turks, what Amazon.com calls “artificial artificial intelligence.” A mechanical turk lets computer programmers use human intelligence to perform tasks computers are unable to do, like choosing the best photographs from a lot, writing product descriptions, or identifying people on CDs. These are things virtual assistants might do, but you can usually get mechanical turks to do them cheaper. (Albeit sometimes the quality is terrible.)

The moral of the story is this: In whatever form you choose to use one, virtual assistants are gaining momentum, especially for people who work from virtual offices. It seems companies with virtual offices and remote employees are among the sweet spots of the virtual assistant industry in whatever shape it takes.

U.S. businesses rely on a mobile workforce to drive growth and retain clients—but companies increasingly are looking for ways to effectively manage mobile employees. That’s the overarching takeaway from Runzheimer International’s Total Employee Mobility Benchmark Report.

A virtual office is one way to manage employees more effectively. Sure, it costs a bit to set up all the technologies, but virtual offices that rely on software like Salesforce.com’s Chatter or even Skype can help you keep track of your mobile workers and collaborate more effectively.

So before we get into the various mobile findings, let’s take a closer look at the real cost of empowering employees with virtual office space. Runzheimer reports the direct spend per virtual office employee was $1,981.

That’s a decrease of 27 percent over 2009—and it’s also a lot less expensive than business travel. Forty percent of survey participants plan to increase the number of virtual office employees in the upcoming year.

What are the biggest benefits of the mobile workforce? Twenty-six percent said employee satisfaction, and 25 percent said using the mobile workforce effectively to gain a competitive advantage.

These findings are significant, Runzheimer says, showcasing that organizations understand the value of the mobile workforce. In fact, employees are now expected to be mobile, providing a competitive advantage to organizations by ensuring the right employee is at the right place at the right time.

The Karvay Virtual Law Group is getting in on the virtual law office action. The company just launched a Web site called eLawyerNY.com to serve New Yorkers that want to do their legal work online.

Karvay was careful to communicate that it offers clients more than just self-prepared online legal documents. The virtual law firm says every client document is reviewed by a state licensed attorney for accuracy and completeness. The whole goal is to provide client convenience without sacrificing legal expertise. The virtual law service is also designed to save clients time and money, with faster responses at lower costs than traditional law firms.

Much like other virtual law offices, Karvay clients can interact with attorneys via a secure client portal—and receive secure online delivery of approved documents, including wills, power of attorney, living wills, health care proxies, living trusts, and online estate planning.

What’s it going to cost you? Rates for these Internet law firm services are comparable to existing non-lawyer legal form Web sites, but consumers get one very important extra: proofing by a licensed attorney. The virtual law firm also offers online document storage in secure Web space devoted to each client.

Who’s behind this virtual law office? Rudolf Karvay has been practicing trust and estate planning law for 17 years. He earned his bachelor of arts degree from Hofstra University in 1985 and attended Brooklyn Law School as a Richardson Scholar, where he earned his law degree in 1992. He’s a frequent lecturer on estate and trust topics and a member of the Nassau County Bar Association. Sounds like a virtual law office you can trust.

Of course, there’s plenty of competition among virtual law offices in New York—and Karvay is hardly first to market. Walker Saunders also runs a virtual law firm in New York, among many others. But that’s not the point. The point is that the virtual law office trend continues to rise and there are more and more options for consumers.

In response to the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck the Japanese cities of Sendai and Kessenuma, wireless carriers and VoIP companies are offering free communications services.

VIP Communications, an international calling services provider, is offering the first 10 minutes of every call to Japan free of charge at least through Friday, March 18th, 2011.

“When we heard the news that Japan was hit with the largest earthquake in at least 100 years, and the massive tsunami that followed, our immediate response was that we had to do something that enabled our customers to call their friends and families, and provide support to those closest to them currently living in Japan,” says Graham Milne, CEO of VIP Communications.

Vonage is also offering customers free calls to Japan. The company is waiving per-minute calling charges until March 18 for customers calling from their Vonage home phones.

“We care deeply about our customers and want to ensure they can reach their loved ones in the aftermath of this horrific natural disaster,” says Marc Lefar, CEO of Vonage.  “Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by the earthquake in Japan and we hope this helps keep friends and family connected at this time of great need.”

Meanwhile, Sprint is waiving text-message fees for Sprint customers who send mobile donations to a number of short codes and organizations participating in the relief and recovery efforts.

“Sprint extends a heartfelt condolence to the people of Japan affected by today’s tragic events,” says Ralph Reid, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility for Sprint. “It is Sprint’s hope that this support of the relief efforts following today’s earthquake will encourage our customers to give willingly and to where it is needed the most.”

Verizon is going a step further, providing, making calls to Japan free for most wireless and residential customers through April 10. Verizon Wireless post-paid customers in the U.S. will also receive free text and multimedia messaging to Japan.

Finally, AT&T said it has implemented international calling and texting support efforts for U.S. residential wireless and wireline consumers trying to connect with loved ones in Japan. Customers will not be charged for international long distance usage from the U.S. and Puerto Rico to Japan or text messages to Japan that originate from a U.S. wireless number through March 31.

“We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can,” says Mark Collins, senior vice president, Voice and Data Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this—we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”

I’ve been beating the “virtual offices save small businesses money” drum for years. Now, Virtual PBX is backing me up with a study of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that offers proof in the proverbial pudding.

Virtual PBX surveyed more than 600 SMBs. The survey field included CEOs, owners, partners, principals, directors and sales managers. They all shared their views on issues like how often they use a virtual office, how effective virtual settings are, the cost of virtual offices, and the adoption of technology to support virtual businesses.

What are the top reasons for adopting virtual offices?

• 61% – employee flexibility
• 54% – cost savings
• 42% – geographic distance of staff
• 41% – desire to reduce commute time, cost and pollution

Those findings aren’t surprising—at least not to me. The next part of the survey was a little more telling as to the finer details of virtual office use.

• 60%-plus work from a virtual office almost all the time, while another 27 percent work between two and 10 days a month outside the office.
• 57% say half or more of their workforce uses a virtual office during a typical month
• 59% feel they are more effective working from a virtual location than in a traditional office

Now, what about cost savings? The trumpet I’ve been blowing for the past few years? Greg Brashier, COO of Virtual PBX, says, “Small- and medium-sized business leaders are on the forefront of embracing virtual offices to boost business efficiency, cut costs and provide more flexibility to their workforces.”

According to the Virtual PBX survey, 43 percent of SMB leaders figure they save at least $1,000 a month on items like rent, IT equipment, phone service and supplies by tapping a virtual office. And get this…8 percent figure they save more than $10,000 a month. That’s almost mind-boggling. But it’s true!

Wrapping up the survey, Virtual PBX found out that virtual workers are addicted to cell phones. Eighty-seven percent use them as a business communications device. Also popular are landlines, used by 49 percent; VoIP phone lines, used by 25 percent; and computer-based VoIP soft phones, used by 20 percent.  Nearly two-thirds of have a local number for callers to reach them, while the same number also indicated they have a toll-free number.

Disaster recovery services made headlines last week when thousands of Gmail accounts went missing. Google actually had to revert to tape backups to restore service.

There are many different ways to approach disaster recovery. You can store it on off-site servers, use tape back ups (like Google did), rely on removable hard drives, or even tap into an Internet-based service. That’s all fine and good—but what about your telephone service in the wake of a disaster?

Gartner estimates that only 35 percent of small to mid-sized businesses have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place. Yet according to a recent NFIB National Small Business Poll, man-made disasters impact 10 percent of small businesses and natural disasters impact more than 30 percent of small businesses stateside.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Telephone outages were a major problem in the face of that emergency. And many businesses had were forced down—not necessarily because their power was out or their building damaged—but because telecom systems were damaged.

Main Virtual Office is offering a virtual office solution that aims to solve the problem. Main Virtual Office has a nationwide network of PSTN and VoIP servers and call centers that can keep businesses lines up and running even in the face of a disaster.

Essentially, Main Virtual Office handles the automatic transfer of telephone services to its telecom solutions if a natural disaster strikes so you can avoid phone service interruption. Your calls can be transferred to any phone number, or Main Virtual Office can take voicemail messages and answer calls personally with a virtual receptionist.

Main Virtual Office is positioning itself as the disaster recovery solutions service of choice for business phone users. But the company also handles calls for companies on a day in, day out basis so companies can focus on their core competencies.

You can take a two-week free trial run of Main Virtual Office.