Michelle Prefers

Business Phone Systems

So I still recommend Freedom Voice which I used to use before as my small business voicemail, but I’ve since moved over to this business phone service  because they are very reasonably priced.

Here are my pros & cons for this business telephone service:

Pros

1. Their pricing schedule is wonderful. They include minutes in with your package (starting at $9.99), so you don’t have to pay for minutes unless you go over your package allotment.

   I was initially only looking at their virtual fax service because I may be switching my home number to Magic Jack & if you think about it, most virtual fax services already charge you $10/month, whereas with this full small business voicemail package, you get faxing PLUS all the other features including voicemail messages that come into your email. If you go one level up you get your own toll free fax number.

2. To get additional virtual pbx numbers is only $4.99 per month. You can’t beat that. And their business voicemail system works with local numbers too whereas Freedom Voice always told me you would take a chance that their voicemail service may not work if you used their local numbers.
3. They have this really cool controller that you install on your computer & when a call comes in, you can set it up to either accept the phone call, send it to your business voicemail greetings, or just let it ring & eventually it will go to your configured voicemail system. This is exactly what I needed & I couldn’t do this with Freedom Voice before.
4. You can also use the controller to call out so that your toll free number shows up on the persons call display. This way if you work from home, your home number is never divulged & you don’t have to private caller, which can be a problem because most people don’t pick up a private call.

   Again, I think you can do this with Freedom Voice, but it would cost you minutes to speak on the phone. With Ring Central I never have to worry about minutes now.

5. You can even dial overseas using your minutes. I still don’t completely understand how the amounts are calculated even though I had a supervisor explain it to me, but it can be done. I make overseas phone calls all the time as I need to speak to clients, and I still have never gone through all my minutes.
6. Another tool you can use, is using the call controller to speak to a staffer overseas for free. They will need to use their computer (like Skype), but you give them their own extension & then have them download the controller and away you go. This is perfect when you are managing staff and want to speak to them.
7. There are other features that I use with Ring Central that I didn’t use with Freedom Voice, but in all fairness, Freedom Voice may have had these features and I just didn’t realize they had them.

   Like…

   an announce only greeting feature where you educate the caller about your business. This is commonly used with Realtors (Real Estate Agents) and Multi Level Marketing People (I’m neither just so you know).

   What I did, was I set up 3 extensions just for my offline marketing plan, and then placed a separate toll free number in ads I ran in newspapers. Callers would listen to the professional voicemail greetings I recorded.

8. Ring Central’s interface is HUGE. It’s very clear that they spent a lot of money creating that interface. In my opinion it is a lot better than Freedom Voice’s toll free number pbx service.

   The only challenge I had, was understanding all that Ring Central has to offer, and getting it set up properly because their staff can misinform you. But saying that, I managed and I’m happy when my small business voice mail system works.

9. They have a lot bigger selection of “music on hold”.
10. Their support is open 24/7, while Freedom Voice’s is not.
11. You can of course port your current 1-800 toll free number over and while they told me it would take a week or so, it only took 24-36 hours.
12. They are in Canada too for all you Canadian small businesses out there.

Cons

1. Their sales team doesn’t know what they are doing. I was either lied to or misinformed by the sales rep who signed me up & not just about one thing, but about at least 6-10 things. For this reason I went through a lot of stress for the first 2 weeks once I moved over from Freedom Voice because there were so many problems. Even the day I told her to go ahead & sign me up it took her hours to do that & I was left hanging because she went into a meeting and didn’t bother to inform me. So they are either very uneducated about what is going on in their own company, they lie to get the sale, or they have poor communication skills. (or a combination of all of those issues).
2. Once I realized it wasn’t just a simple mistake & she was the problem, I couldn’t even speak to her manager because no one would pick up the phone. It just kept ringing and ringing. After realizing I could only deal with their tech and customer support call center, it took me almost 2 weeks before I finally got in contact with her manager. Until this day I don’t know why because they said they e-mailed him and he said he never got the e-mails. He did compensate me though so I stayed with Ring Central.
3. They don’t let you speak to anyone in the US once you are signed up. They only have their sales team in the US. Their tech support and customer support is all in the Philippines. After encountering so many problems I’ve since wanted to complain about their support team to someone in the US since clearly the ball has been dropped, but I had to pull teeth from the sales manager to get a name of who oversees that area of their business.
   So the bottom line is you can’t easily talk to someone in the States about their call center in the Philippines.
4. First level tech support in the Philippines is terrible. They all give you different opinions or stories. Or it’s clear they don’t know what they are talking about, so I learned very quickly that I have to ask to speak to a manager right away in order to get someone who is smart. And while they are much smarter and I had 4-5 different supervisor’s names and e-mail addresses in my address book so I could get answers quickly every time I e-mailed them with a question or problem, they wouldn’t respond back to me.

   Finally after the 5th time this happened I lost my temper and threatened to cancel my account.I e-mailed the sales manager again and he had the head supervisor of the Filipino team call me. I used him for support twice when suddenly 2-3 weeks later he was promoted, so now I have someone else. It’s clear there’s just too much moving around at this company, but they seem to have weathered their business problems for years now.

   I began to understand why no one ever stays put at Ring Central. It is very hard to deal with them because their communication skills and common sense just isn’t there for me and that’s even with management. I have since learned this is an issue even when hiring Filipinos to do work for me.
   While there was the odd problem with the tech support at Freedom Voice and towards the end of my stay with them I again had problems getting someone higher up to care about me as a customer, for the most part I could communicate with their tech support and they were in the States as of 2009.

5. As for the quality of the hardware with Ring Central, so far there’s been a few glitches, like people telling me they didn’t hear the beep so they couldn’t leave a message, me pressing a button on the controller and the call not transferring to me, etc.I don’t get a lot of calls so it’s hard to say how often this would happen, but for the most part the online business voicemail system works 98% of the time.

I know it seems like I have a lot of complaints about Ring Central. It did take around a month to get everything set up and I had to understand how the backend of their company works, but for the price I pay and what the system gives me, I’m going to stick with Ring Central.

It is clear they have poor management across the board both in the US and the Philippines, but now that things are set up, I’ll just deal with it, as I shouldn’t have to call tech support all the time anyway and for the most part I don’t.

As of the update to this post on 10-09-11, I have called their tech support maybe once in the last 4 months.

So, if you think  you can deal with the initial stress, their toll free number and voice mail system is DEFINITELY worth it. If you have any questions, just contact me.

Michelle

Even though this is not a business tool, it’s a tool for life (a parenting tool), & it’s even taught me a few ways I can deal with team members in my company.

I decided to place this here because most of us are parents, or mentors, or grandparents, foster parents, big brothers, or aunts, uncles, older siblings, etc.

If you aren’t, you must know someone who is a parent & needs help.

In this day & age, most parents are very busy either running a business, or working to build their career.

Free time is barely an option, & even those of us who work from home so we have more time with our family find parenting to be very exhausting.

Long gone are the days when most kids were “well behaved”, now we seem to have been dealt a bunch of kids who are defiant, disrespectful, “know it alls”, & even abusive either emotionally, verbally or physically.

In the last year since my son turned 16 (soon to be 17), I started to encounter major problems with him from hacking into my business computer, to refusing to get a job, to hanging out with kids who made him more wild, him going out till all hours of the night. Then he started stealing from me, making fun of me with his friends & even to my face, the constant lies, & manipulation & the list goes on.

The nightmare was getting worse & worse, I was at my wits end. My business was put on the back burner while I had to deal with this kid who turned into my worst nightmare.

I didn’t even know what parental abuse was until last year.

I went to every social help agency I could find, & came across social workers who didn’t help & some almost blamed me for my son’s dysfunctional behavior, or they wanted to help split up the family without trying to teach us how to solve the problem.

I then sought out a therapist (psychologist) who didn’t communicate well or made too many mistakes & wasn’t quick enough to help.

FINALLY I found the answer to my problem.

In today’s society even though we are told we should care for our kids, in high school & college we STILL aren’t taught how to parent properly. We are told (or given the hidden message) that we as parents have to suffer because they are “just kids & it’s normal”.

Well I’m telling you now it’s NOT NORMAL, & if you are a parent who’s being abused by your kid(s), you need to take action today.

I only wish I had come across this parenting course years ago, but I am not going to whine about what I didn’t do, I’m only looking forward from here on in.

Please look it over. They even have a payment plan & a 30 day money back guarantee.

I swear if you care about yourself & your kids, this will change your entire perception on how to raise them & how you think about your situation.

Let us know what you think.

While there are never any guarantees in life, I love this program to bits & highly recommend it & I’m not even done the complete program, I’m only on lesson 4.

Their parent support line has also helped me to brainstorm & also vent when I needed it most.

I hope it helps you & your family.

Michelle

So if you are running a business online, or even offline, most of us have to find a way to have mail sent to us discretely.

If we work from home, we don’t want the entire world to know our home address, and getting a traditional Post office box doesn’t work in most cases, trust me, I know.

For over 3 years I used a UPS (used to be Mail Boxes Etc.) post office box out of Buffalo New York because I needed to have a US address (I live in Canada) in order to get a US merchant account.

I didn’t talk to the people there often, but some of the time when I did, I wasn’t always thrilled, as I found them to be cold in personality.

I moved around a couple of times & they didn’t seem to have a computer system, so sometimes they got my old address mixed up with the new one when it came time to send me my mail.

They didn’t like the fact that I didn’t want my mail sent to me monthly. They clearly wanted to make more money off of me, & being a business person I understand that, but the fact that they mentioned this occasionally as if they were “doing me a favor” by sending me my mail every 3 or 6 months didn’t sit well with me. I shouldn’t have to be forced into having my mail (only a couple bank statements) sent to me every month.

At first they only charged me a $5 fee to send me the mail, but then I started to notice that they were raising up the prices to $6, & I didn’t like that. To be clear, this was for 4-6 sheets of paper most of the time.

Also another problem was that they didn’t send out their mail until Friday, so if you needed it right away, well I assume they would charge another fee to expedite their process.

One time they charged me $16 just to forward a small package to my assistant who lives in Ohio.

They refused to send me the small package directly (they were bank checks), so I had to have it mailed twice.

When my assistant sent it to me, it only cost him $7 (remember, that’s to Canada), & they charged me $16 to send it within the States, so yes, I felt I was ripped off.

I should have changed addresses & P.O. Boxes a long time ago, but I was told that the bank that holds my merchant account wouldn’t be happy, so I didn’t want to risk it. Finally I made the choice to change from UPS to an online mailing system.

It was a bit of a struggle only because my address changed to a different State, so Amex wanted to redo my application, but after that was done, I was amazed at how easy it was to use this new post office mail forwarding system.

Not only did I no longer have to pay to have statements sent to me, any statements that I would have needed immediately, like chargeback notices, was no longer an issue.

When you get a chargeback, you have to respond immediately, & when I used the traditional UPS post office box, I always went over the bank’s deadline because I had no idea I had even received a chargeback. This was always very stressful for me.

With this high tech post office box, I receive an e-mail notice from them that I have mail.

I then decide if I want to scan the mail, or have it forwarded/mailed to me (I have yet to have ANYTHING forwarded to me).

Once they have scanned it, I open up the PDF, & either forward it to my bookkeeper, or save it on my hard drive & then I’m DONE!  It’s really THAT easy.

I do have to tell them to shred them afterward of course.

And if I ever wanted to get a package sent to me, I know the prices would be a lot cheaper then what UPS tried to charge me & there would be no attitude.

In fact, their customer service is very good. I’ve talked to them a few times already.

So, if you live outside the US & you want to get a US merchant account (I can help you get one) & you have to come up with a US address, I recommend you use this service.

Even if you live in the States & you don’t want to divulge your home address because you work from home online, I recommend you use this service.

I did have my assistant compare this mail forwarding company & a couple of others, & this one ended up being the best value for the buck.

When he did all this comparing I also came to realize that I was spending a lot more with UPS per month then with this company. Add to that not having to wait for my mail & not having to ever have it forwarded to me because everything is done with the computer (Internet) well, I’m definitely a happy business owner.

Let me know how it goes for you.

Michelle