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Recommendation: Ringcentral
As I know most of you are in my same business situation (i.e. small if not one-person-show), I'm sure you can appreciate the desire to "appear larger" to your customers. Not only does doing so drive sales, but actually increases overall customer confidence in your abilities as a host.
From time to time I encounter things that make it easier to do that. Four years ago, for me, it was a dandy little device that allowed me to play on-hold music for my customers. Small touch, but I loved hitting that hold button (which in hindsight may have had the side-effect of poorer customer service!)
All that said, I just started using ringcentral.com. There were a few kinks at first in the service, but overall I see it as a HUGE improvement in the way I do business now that I subscribe. Essentially, it's a service whereby they give you one or more customer service numbers (either local or toll-free), and when a customer calls it, they can be greeted with an automated assistant ("Hi there, you've reached ElectricFox, for customer service, hit 1, etc"). The best part is what happens next: you can route specific extensions to outside lines - for example, your normal business line. Customers are placed on hold, and you are asked if you want to take the call. If no, they go to VM. You can also have it set to ring more than one number to "find you". I have it set up so that if my main line is busy or ring-no-answer, it goes to my cell phone. You might not want that sort of intrusion, but my customers love that I am almost always there to help them.
Anyway, for $15/mo, which includes 100 minutes of long distance, it's not bad.
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07-19-2004, 05:50 PM
, if you want to look into it, feel free to click this link and I get 10%:
Works great for us, as we even have a switchboard set up that gives clients 'live' system updates, network status etc....
Hybrid Mode
