This didn’t surprise me in the least. Smartphones, tablets and laptops give people a more flexible working environment and have the potential to help with their work / life balance. Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent that instead they are contributing to a new era of workaholics. This isn’t good for businesses or people’s personal lives, but here are some simple tips to help set screen slaves free:

1.    Break your addiction

Do you find yourself checking your phone after dinner just because of a lull in conversation? You always do it and then start to get bogged down answering emails. If so, break the habit! Turn it off when you come home from work. Create a new routine that doesn’t involve checking emails. The key to kicking the habit is finding something to replace it with.

2.    Be clear about your availability

If you use a mobile phone or web-accessible email, establish clear boundaries around your availability and highlight that you will not be contactable outside of these times, even if the other person deems it ‘urgent’.

3.    …and stick to it

If you say you will not be available outside of specific times, never make an exception – doing this once will lead to colleagues and clients expecting you to be available out of hours on a regular basis.

4.    Set clear parameters

If you operate a flexible-working policy in your business, establishing clear parameters is crucial to ensure a happy and productive workforce. Always pactice what you preach, so that your staff understand your expectations and what is acceptable.

5.    Agree a hierarchy of urgency and importance

We all understand that there are issues which require urgent attention and there will be times outside of our working day where we will need to respond to an emergency. However, this should be the exception rather than the rule. Agree with colleagues exactly what constitutes an emergency – and this does not include running out of toner.

6.    Be clever online

It is important that you don’t get sucked into the world of social media addiction. While tweeting regularly is important for maintaining visibility and engaging with your customers and employees, this does not mean that it must take over your life. Set a regular time each day to update your feeds and take advantage of systems such as Tweetdeck that can help you schedule tweets throughout the day in one go, so you’re always there, but not…

7.    Do not, under any circumstances, check your emails before bed

The bedroom should be a no-go area for smartphones. Do not use your phone as an alarm, as it is far too easy to slip in to the habit of checking your emails or messages before bed. You must be able to completely switch off before going to sleep in order to be well rested and keep a healthy balance in your life.

8.    Cut yourself off

Ensure you take time away from work by putting yourself in different environments, where it is not possible to reach for your smartphone, tablet or laptop. This could include anything from an exercise class or the cinema. For me, it is kayaking, which allows me to completely re-focus my attention –  with the added bonus of a spot of exercise.

9.    Don’t allow late-night emails to become the norm

Working extra hours outside of the office can relieve pressure in the short-term, but when you’re doing it every single night, there is something that needs changing. It’s sometimes difficult to spot when staff are over-worked, but regular late-night emails could be a sign that all is not well.

10.    Create boundaries to keep your work and personal life separate

It is important that the boundaries of your personal life and your work life are not blurred. Weekends and holidays should be for family and friends only. Record a message on your voicemail telling callers that you are unavailable and switch off.

This article was featured in Management Today on Friday 13th July, 2012.

Electrical supplies were lost between Swansea and Newport, with Pontypridd, Caerphilly, Bridgend and Barry also affected.

Commuters in Wales had to face delays of around 2 hours, with knock-on effects causing further delays to rail services throughout South West and some London trains. The impact was felt by businesses all over Wales and the South West (we had a few of the Gradwell team stuck), but the pain the commuters suffer could be softened by capitalising on internet technologies.

If you enable your employees to set up an office in their own home and create a backup plan when disruption strikes, you can save your business time (employees won’t be late) and money (no lost business due to absences).

But what if an important client calls?

They will be able to answer it! Using Business VoIP, phone numbers are not tied to a physical location. For example, the Gradwell office has an 01225 area code. If an employee lives in Bristol, say in the 01179 area code, and needed to work at home, they can. They simply take their VoIP phone home, plug it in and their 01225 number rings through to their 01179 location.

All you they need is a broadband connection and VoIP phone. This is all possible because the number is tied to the account on Gradwell servers, not the physical connection like BT lines. As an added benefit, your business will also reduce your bills on calls charges and line rental.

But what about their emails?

Not a problem. Use a Hosted Exchange service and your employees have ‘anywhere access’ to their email, contacts, calendar and tasks, whether that be through Outlook, a web browser or on a smartphone like the iPhone. They can send and receive mail as if they were at their desk! All the information is held in ‘the cloud’, so anything you do when away from the office is synced with the servers, so you only ever have the most up-to-date information.

But what if they need access to files on their computer?

There are two options. Your employees can either use a remote access service, such as LogMeIn, to access and control their computer from their home PC. Or they can use a sharing service like Dropbox that allows you to share folders (and the files within them) on your computer with colleagues. You can then either install a Dropbox folder on your home computer or access the files from a web browser.

If you add all the simple and affordable services to your business, your employees won’t be among the thousands losing working hours when stuck at home.

And those stuck members of the Gradwell team? They simply turned around, went home and did exactly as suggested above, worked from home using our internet technologies.

Talk to our sales team about how Business VoIP and Hosted Exchange can help you and your business decrease commuter stress and enable home working on 01225 800 808.

(Image by John Seb Barber)

1. Customise keys

Your phone comes with lots of keys. Some of them might be useful to your every day tasks, some of them not so much. For this reason snom phones come with a number of customisable keys to help you create the phone that you need to work quickly and efficiently.

You may think you no longer need your conferencing button and would benefit from a new mute button – you can do that.

Simply login through your phone’s web interface, navigate to the function keys setting and change the key’s functions using the comprehensive list of programmable key options available on the snom knowledgebase.

2. Customise screens

If you have one of the new snom 8 series phone, be it the feature-rich 821 or the new touch-screen 870, you customise your holding screen to add your company’s logo or branding across your telephone system.

Simply visit the official snom idle screen generator, follow the steps and create your own bespoke holding screen with the image of your choice. The generator uploads your chosen image and provides you with the choice of displaying the time, date and account information.

When you’ve selected all the options you require, you’ll then be provided with your custom code to add to your phone via the web interface.

3. Customise ringtones

Just like you can with your mobile device, you can select a custom ringtone on your snom deskphone – and it’s just as easy. Another simple generator from snom will help convert your favourite audio file into a compatible ringtone, which you then host on your own server.

Open your phone’s web interface, select ‘Custom Melody’ from the ‘Ringtone’ select menu, paste in the URL and press ‘Save’. Now any call you receive will play your custom ringtone.

4. Stream videos

8 series phones, such as the 821 and 870, can use the in-built minibrowser to stream camera feeds right to their colour screens. This means your security cameras, be that for a door entry system, can be shown direct on your phone’s screen.

Follow the steps in the official snom guide and, with a few lines of code, you’ll soon have a selection of video streams to choose from.

5. Charge and power devices

Need to charge a device that has a USB connector? No free ports on your computer? Simply connect the device to the USB port on the rear of a snom 821 or 870. Problem solved.

The port, originally designed for use with wireless dongles, can be used to charge a wide range of devices, and snom have even used it to charge an iPhone!

6. Add pictures to contacts

So you’re back from that busy networking event with lots of new contacts in your address book. A call comes in from one of them. Trouble is you’re better with faces than names, so you can’t remember who is who.

With the snom 8 series phones you can add a picture to each of your contacts, so when anyone from your address book calls you, their picture pops up on your screen as it rings – allowing you to jog your memory before you answer.

…and more!

The above are just a few of the many things you can achieve with your snom IP phone. There is much more we haven’t covered, such as linking to a door entry system.

There are plenty of applications you can add to your phone, including many custom-made by eager developers who took part in the snom XML Application World Cup, The winners of the 2010 edition included Twitter, RSS and weather apps.

An extensive resource is snom’s “Did you know…” section on their website.

(Sign image by Theron Trowbridge)

There are many things to consider, such as call groups, recorded messages and caller ID routing, but something simpler can have a much larger impact: your phone number.

Before they call you, a lead can form an idea of your business thanks to your digits.

Memorable numbers offer a wide range of benefits to a business, including:

• Memorable numbers are just that – memorable!
  Having a phone number with a pattern (e.g. 800 800, 58 59 60, 466 477) means the digits can be grouped together. Psychologists have suggested that the brain can remember seven pieces of information. With your area code you have more than that. So a memorable number groups the numbers together, meaning fewer segments for the caller to have to remember!
• Memorable numbers can for part of your brand identity
  If you have a memorable number, it can be used as part of your brand identity. Think of 0800 REVERSE. The memorable number spells out what their business does. For example, office furniture suppliers could have 633 423 (OFFICE) or a mobile handset distributor could have 662453 (MOBILE). Creating a word from your numbers helps you stand out from the crowd.
• Track your marketing efforts
  So you sent out that email campaign to all your leads last week. Did it work? How many calls did it generate? If you use a special number for a campaign it is easier to track the leads it creates. Combine your marketing number with Business VoIP and you can let your sales staff know why someone is calling before they answer, allowing them to answer with a highly-targeted greeting.

With memorable numbers bringing in more business leads, forming part of your brand identity and helping you track your marketing activity, they can certainly make a difference to your bottom line. And with memorable numbers starting from just £50.00+VAT they provide a fantastic return on investment (ROI).

To talk to one of our experienced sales staff about memorable numbers contact them on 01225 800 808 or at sales@gradwell.com.

(Image source)

It may be great for backing up your photos, but what good is it for businesses?

Cloud computing can be defined as any technology service that is delivered, via the Internet, from a hosted service, so many services can fall into this category.

With that in mind services such as file sharing, Exchange Email and Hosted VoIP can all be classed as cloud services. A company, such as Gradwell, safely holds your information and provides you with the service, saving you the time, money and hassle of storing it locally.

The main benefits of cloud computing

• Money saving: The major benefit to businesses is money saving. Using hosted services means that you don’t have to invest in expensive equipment or software.
• Time saving: With anywhere access to your important files, you don’t have to request that your colleague emails over a file for you to work on. If it is hosted, you can access it immediately.
• Hassle saving: Rather than having to copy your data to several places before you leave the office, say to a USB stick or external hard drive, your data is held in one central place.
• Tech saving: If your data was stored locally and your computer dies, your data goes with it. Store it with a dedicated hosting company and your data is in safe hands.

While this sounds too good to be true, cloud services are a driving force behind being able to set up remote workers with relative ease. You can all access the same files, email accounts and phone system no matter where in the world you are.

And it isn’t just small businesses who are benefitting from cloud computing. A study, commissioned by software company CA Technologies, shows that 80% of big businesses use one or more cloud services, while just over half of them are using up to 6.

To see how hosted services can help your business, talk to one of our experiences sales assistants on 01225 800 808.

However, current technologies mean that businesses do not have to feel the impact of widespread disruption across the UK. By utilising services such as Hosted VoIP, Exchange email, instant messaging and cloud computing, and creating virtual offices for employees, businesses can carry on as normal while the rest of the country grinds to a halt.

By allowing your employees to set up and office in their own home and forego their regular commute during the disruption, you can save your business time (employees won’t be late) and money (no lost business due to absences).

But what if an important client calls their phone number?
They will be able to answer it! Using Business VoIP, your numbers can go anywhere, even if it is a different country! All you need is a broadband connection, and a softphone on your computer or the VoIP phone you use on your desk. This is all possible because the number is tied to the account, not the physical connection like BT lines. As an added benefit, your business will also save money on calls and line rental.

But what about their email and messages?
Using a Hosted Exchange service means your employees have ‘anywhere access’ to their email, contacts, calendar and tasks, whether that be through Outlook, a web browser or on their smartphone. They can send and receive mail as if they had ploughed in through the snow! All the information is held in ‘the cloud’, so anything you do when away from the office is synced with your Outlook client when you return.

But what if they need access to files on their computer?
Your employees can either use a remote access service, such as LogMeIn, to access and control their computer from their home PC. Alternatively, a sharing service like Dropbox allows you to share folders (and the files within them) on your computer with colleagues. You can then either install Dropbox on your home computer or access the files from a web browser.

If you add all the simple and affordable services to your business, your employees won’t be among the thousands losing working hours when stuck at home.

Talk to our sales team about how Business VoIP and Hosted Exchange can help you and your business prepare for winter on 01225 800 808.

(Image by Paul Walker)

Blogging – WordPress

Using a blog is one of the most effective ways to build a following and create a professional web presence with little fuss.

The results won’t be immediate, but with continued blogging, you’ll soon start dominating your key search terms. Blog frequently, with no less than 300 words on topics related to the words that you’ve discovered people use when searching for your products or services.

WordPress is software that is completely customisable and can be used for practically anything you need. There is both a downloadable version, suitable for parking at your web host (e.g. www.myblog.com), as well as more limited online version (e.g. myblog.wordpress.com).

Due to the flexibility of WordPress, you can tailor the look of your blog according by downloading hundreds of free WordPress themes, or buy purchasing one that better suits your needs. You can also engage WordPress designers to create bespoke themes at a later stage if you wish to add to the unique nature of your blog.

These days, it’s possible to use specially designed software to convert or transform your WordPress blog into a Joomla Site, so that if later, you want to give your blog greater functionality and potential, then it’s possible.

Content Management – Joomla

Joomla is a powerful Content Management System, or CMS, which easily allows you to build your own website. Many successful businesses that do not want to spend a fortune on designers fees and wish to retain complete control of their website choose Joomla software. Joomla is easy to use, flexible and can be tailored to your precise needs. It’s completely free to download and there’s a great deal of help and support both on Joomla’s website and across the Internet.

A content management system will help you to get found on the Internet. The CMS organises and maintains all of the different content on your website and presents it to you in a way that makes it very easy for you to create, edit and publish your content to the website. With Joomla you can add music, text, photos, video – whatever you need, it’s all very simple. The main advantage of using Joomla is that CMS systems like this do not require you to have any programming skills, so once you’ve mastered the basics of Joomla, you can quickly create great looking pages without the need for technical expertise or experience.

Forums/Community Site – SimpleMachines

A great way to create interest in your site, build online credibility and drive traffic towards your products or services is to create a forum or community site. A great way to add an online community to your website can be found at Simple Machines Forum. They offer a professional software that’s completely free and only takes a few minutes to setup and get running. It has a completely customisable layout and unique technology allowing your website and the forum software to work together seamlessly.

A forum is the perfect tool for bringing people to your site. There they can express their opinions on a range of subjects, all under your watchful eye, and every comment or question they add helps you to attract more people to your site.

So what are you waiting for? Do you want to create a professional looking website quickly and with no fuss? Try WordPress, Joomla or SimpleMachines, but when you need a place to host your new website, then go to Gradwell, our Internet services are designed specifically for business, so visit www.gradwell.com/email-web/web for more details.

We have all learnt to switch off lights in empty rooms and turn off the tap while brushing our teeth but the expectancy on us to do more to stop global climate change is increasing.

It can be hard to see what more you can do if you are already very conscious about your carbon footprint but perhaps your work or business life has not had as much scrutiny as your home life.

With all the great advancements in technology surely there are alternatives that many businesses may have overlooked. Here are a few of our suggestions:

Cut Your Travel With VoIP

How often do you travel across town for a ten to thirty minute meeting? Cut the cost of travel and the price to the environment by exploring the benefits of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Call conferencing features enable you to hold meetings over several sites on one phone system – saving time, money and emissions.

If you would like to enhance your meeting then you can use services like GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com) where you can share your screen, and therefore PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, video etc with all the meeting participants. It will add extra interaction to your meeting and help add the visual element conference calls lack.

By holding meetings ‘online’ you can easily work from home meaning; you don’t have to drive to work, or drive around all day to meetings. Cutting transport emissions is key to the Government’s ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’. It’s not just great for your company’s green image, but also your budget.

Why Run Two Offices?

Think about all the things that are needed to run an office. Electricity for your computers, phone system, servers, lighting, air-con etc. And then there’s the gas for your heating systems, staff facilities. Why not seriously cut costs and do your bit for the environment by encouraging your staff to work from home?

Not only will you cut emissions from reducing travel to an office but you’ll also be using almost the same amount of energy that is used to heat and light your home anyway!

If you are concerned about accessing your files and you still have an ‘office machine’ then you can remotely log into your work computer by installing free programme LogMe In (https://www.logmein.com) or ask your IT consultant about remotely accessing your server.

Accessing files wherever you need them also reduces the amount of hard copies you have to make, saving paper, ink and energy on printing those long documents – which are usually only read over once or twice before being discarded.

There are also other hidden benefits to working from home such as reduced stress, increased productivity and no train delays or traffic jams.

Gradwell is keen to assist their customers to reduce their carbon footprint. One such client Sustain IT (http://www.sustainitsolutions.co.uk) has already adopted this as part of their corporate culture and reducing their carbon footprint is seen as a vital part of their company policy, with VoIP being the centre and catalyst for this.

“Initially we had not thought of our carbon footprint. However we now consider it to be a vital part of our Company Policy. Internet Telephony helps us to reduce our employee travel and therefore reduce the impact on the environment that commuting is having. So anything we can do as an employer to encourage our staff to use home working or increase the use of the public transport network and cycling has to be good for the future of our children and the planet.”

Everyone making a small change will make a big difference to the planet – and it can benefit your business too. Choose Gradwell VoIP to start reducing your carbon footprint today.

What if you could pool your call takers in one place and still use local numbers for your customers and clients to call?

You could make significant savings by reducing hours or even assign your staff with new tasks designed to address other shortfalls in their location.

We know of a number of small and medium businesses in the United Kingdom that are looking at cost cutting measures to ensure the survival of their company through the downturn. Many are considering closing some of their local branches. However, the customers will still have the same number saved in their phones and on old written correspondence. It’s likely that they will still try calling the same local number. Do you want to lose out on their custom?

If your business is considering a similar measure, but you are concerned about losing a proportion of your loyal customers, you can simply port the phone number to Gradwell’s business VoIP, the Voice over Internet Protocol service. This way, you can keep the same old telephone numbers alive and not worry about missing out on losing customers because you can just have their calls answered from your main office. Branch closures are tough, but it doesn’t mean close of business for everyone. You can use VoIP to keep your business functioning, even at the toughest times.

When finances are tight, then profits really matter; do you really need to keep a receptionist working on quiet afternoons in each branch? We know of a successful optician who runs their branches with fewer staff on a Friday afternoon because one office can handle all the calls coming from over twenty-two of the branches. Now that seems like a great way to cut costs doesn’t it? With VoIP it’s possible to cut expenditure and cut calling costs at the same time.

Furthermore, while you’re cutting the number of staff hours that you need to run your organization, you can also extend your opening hours by routing all of your after-hours calls through to a central reception. You don’t need to have a separate office for each number, you can have all calls routed straight through to a single receptionist, or if you have high call volumes, a single office of receptionists. Seriously, how many receptionists do you actually need? With Gradwell VoIP, you can set up your phone to identify the precise type of call that’s coming in and direct it to the next available receptionist or automatically send it to voicemail, if it’s non-essential.

What if you needed to move your entire operation to a different country to cut costs? You’d still want to maintain the same low cost local numbers for your customers? Well, it’s simple, using VoIP, your number stays the same wherever you go, at still a fraction of the cost of traditional telecommunications companies. Sound like a plan?

But can VoIP (or Internet telephony) really help your company improve its marketing? Well, the short answer is yes. Clearly, the most frequently given reason that people switch to VoIP from traditional calling plans is the amount of money that can be saved. VoIP uses the Internet to call, which can massively reduce your calling costs, especially if you call long distance or overseas.

VoIP offers many more advanced features than regular landlines could ever provide. Nevertheless despite the technological advantage and the greatly reduced costs, it’s the marketing benefits that must not be so easily overlooked.

When VoIP is used for business, it helps to improve the relationship and communications with your clients. The VoIP system allows you to easily track and monitor calls and offers a professional front for anyone calling you. You can create specific numbers and attach them to particular promotions, products or services. Your staff can answer the phone with this already in mind and offer the caller a specific greeting that’s particularly targeted to the promotion, product or service that’s associated with that particular phone number.

By choosing to use a range of phone numbers for different types of marketing (newspaper ads, emails, website or poster) you’ll be able to tell which campaign is the most successful and tailor your future marketing strategy accordingly.

Using Gradwell’s unique VoIP control panel, you can produce monthly reports showing precise call statistics : how many calls were made to your numbers, which number was used most frequently, how long the call were and more. You can also relate the data to the productivity of your employees for motivational purposes. Reports can be exported and circulated for analysis in your marketing strategy meetings.

While each of your marketing methods may display a different number, all of the calls can be directly routed to come through to just one desk, one office or a whole call centre. Furthermore, when someone calls one of your VoIP numbers, a short piece of text can be displayed to your staff telling them which product, service or promotion the caller is interested in learning about, preparing them for the call. It really is that simple to improve your marketing efficiency and reporting with VoIP.

VoIP can help you.

With a local VoIP number, you can give your customers and clients the assurance and low-cost calling charges of dialing a local number.

You can obtain a VoIP number for the next town or city, or even the next country and have phone numbers for all the different sales areas ring through to the same phone in a single base of operations.

An example would be a company in Leeds and looking to widen their sales perimeter to include Manchester, Birmingham, London or Paris. Rather than opening up an office in that city, with all of the capital costs involved, they can simply print their local phone number for that town in their Yellow Pages or Telephone Directory. All the calls can be routed through to a central office and services can be advertised anywhere, widening the coverage area and really letting online marketing mean global sales opportunities. You can choose a local number from a choice of over 650 UK area dialing codes, which means your customers will get that same familiar local feeling, wherever you’re based. If you want a local number for the USA, Europe or the Middle-East, there is a wide range of local, national and toll-free numbers available to you.

Wherever you set up your VoIP account, you bring existing number with you, so you’ll still maintain the integrity of having a local number, but the possibilities for your telephony has now increased ten-fold. Should you be looking to offer your customers a freephone number instead of a local number, then it’s just as easy to set up an 0800 number as it is to set up a local one.

Imagine a taxi company that served only Bristol, but it wanted to include Cardiff too. Does it need to set up an office in Cardiff or does it simply need a local VoIP number for Cardiff and handle all the calls through the Bristol office? It’s the same for florists and courier services too – give out a local number and let your central hub take the calls. It’s not complex; it’s a straightforward, hassle-free solution to your telephone issue.

Do you travel for business meetings with many clients in many different cities? Create a local presence for your business and help the customer feel closer to you. You can hand out business cards with local numbers for Birmingham, Hamburg, Tokyo or Sydney, helping the client feel closer to you. The client’s happy because they don’t have to call long distance or international to get hold of you and you’re happy because you can track where the business has come from.

VoIP (Voice over IP), also known as Internet telephony, has given many companies and organizations new and innovative ways to promote themselves and run their operations. Businesses are no longer shackled to the bricks and mortar of an office block. Even small home-based businesses can create a virtual office environment that helps them compete with much larger organizations all around the world.

There are numerous highly successful small businesses and sole traders that augment their current operations by creating a virtual office. These days you can sit at home working a full eight-hour day from your living room and still give off a professional image thanks to the technology that’s now available. Gradwell VoIP can help you do it.

One of the most effective and impressive pieces of technology in the virtual office is Internet telephony. VoIP can offer your business many advantages and cost-saving opportunities. But with VoIP there are some simple things that you can do in order to promote your business, regardless of your location or the size of your organisation.

You can produce a professional greeting message so that when a customer or client calls you, they are welcomed to your organisation in style. Larger businesses with much bigger budgets can usually afford to do this, but not the little guys. However with business VoIP, it’s all part of your package.

Using VoIP, you’re able to give caller on hold something to different listen to, with on hold music. Sound like an expensive option? Not with VoIP as it’s all achievable with even the most basic packages, just upload your own music and away you go. You can even record your latest sales offers or an update of what your business has recently achieved to play at regular intervals over the hold music. Boast about your company’s success and let potential customers know what a successful operation you run. You can create, edit and arrange your voicemail prompts all from one computer. Change your answer phone message from anywhere in the world with a few clicks. Keep in touch with your customers and clients by having all calls routed directly to one number. It really is that simple.

You can also send and receive faxes from a single laptop, without the need for a cumbersome fax machine, so your office can go with you anywhere that you go, without giving customers the impression that you’re the Chief Cook and Bottle washer.

But giving out your mobile number can sometimes mean that one side of your life frequently collides with the other. Now you don’t have to give out your mobile number, because you can always be mobile with VoIP.

Using Voice over Internet (VoIP), you can give out a single number for all your phones. This allows you to keep all aspects of your life separate and improves your work-life balance.

Two Desks – Two Phones – One Number

These days lots of people work from multiple locations. Perhaps you have a home office and a work office. With VoIP from Gradwell, you can have a phone on both desks, but use exactly the same phone number for both. That means that regardless of where you are working from, you can answer your phone and stay in touch with your clients.

For example, our client James works predominantly from his home office in Manchester. The main, company office is in London but you can use the same London based number to reach him at both locations. With VoIP you can choose your main number location and pick it up in either office with ease. It’s terrible when you miss that important call because you weren’t at your desk. But now, you can even have your calls forwarded to your mobile from one landline number if you’re in between your home and office. VoIP offers great flexibility and the most advanced features available.

Comfort and Cost

We all like to meet face-to-face but you have to question whether its good for your business’ finance and resources. Even with low cost air fares, you could be spending hundreds of pounds travelling for only a few hours of face-to-face time. Add on any necessary hotels, subsistence and loss of office hours and it’s clearly not a smart option.

Holding a conference call using VoIP can save all the money and effort of face-to-face meetings because VoIP calls are much cheaper than regular calls and they can be made from the comfort of your work or home office. Although you will be saving time and money, holding a phone to your ear or cradling it for long periods can be uncomfortable and has been known to cause Repetitive Strain Injury or RSI. Using a professional headset can ease the strain.

Be Late for Work

One of your clients calls before your office hours to discuss an important matter. The trouble is that if you’re still at home, you can’t receive the call. But with VoIP, you’ll be late for work because you spent the morning closing the big deal in the comfort of your own home.

Of course, you don’t have to tell anyone that you were in your pyjamas at the time. Not only do you get a full night’s sleep but it also makes it easier to deal with those tricky timezone issues. Its almost never convenient to run back to work or stay late to make that important call. With VoIP for business you can quickly make a call from the comfort of your home while your’re making breakfast or just after the kids have gone to bed.

Work on the Move

Do you move from city to city? Or perhaps you’re an international jetsetter, closing deals all over the globe or speaking to important clients on a regular basis face to face. If so, you don’t want to return to a voicemail message box that’s bursting with calls from people that couldn’t get in touch with you. With VoIP you can get just one number and have the calls routed to you from all over the world. Or, if you want your clients to be more at ease, give them a local number in their area to dial and they’ll connect with you.

If you’re busy, you can personalise a voicemail greeting to ensure they know you’ll call back soon You can also choose to be sent email or SMS alerts whenever you receive a voicemail. This gives you the option of dealing with each call when its convenient rather than being bombarded with them on return to the office.

With this in mind, contact centres are employing more and more staff to ensure that their organisation’s customer service levels meet the increasing demands. Here are 8 ways that VoIP for business can be employed to help with Customer Service:

1: Customer Service 24/7

We live in a culture that is increasingly 24/7 oriented. Customers want to speak to someone at 8pm on a Sunday or 3am on a Friday. They want to speak to you at their convenience, not at yours. If your business wants to provide 24/7 customer service, you can use VoIP’s powerful forwarding services to send all incoming calls to another customer service team in any time zone in any location in the world.

2: Low-Cost Call Backs

Many times your customer service team will need to make a call back. If you call back another VoIP user, then that call is free. But if you need to call a landline or a mobile, then using VoIP for call backs is a low cost way of maintaining great customer service standards.

3: The Personal Touch

Each member of your customer service team can have their own individual number. When they’re away from their desk, VoIP can be set to transfer their calls through to one of their colleagues within the same team who will be familiar with the customer’s query or case.

4: Local Numbers

Your customers may be all over the world, but you can give them a local country-specific number. You can have different local numbers for customers in the UK, China, America – wherever you like. The customer dials a local number, you pick up in your contact centre anywhere in the world.

5: Home Workers

If you want to expand your customer service team to include those that work from home, you can set up VoIP to forward your customer service calls to the individual home worker’s phones. Now you can rapidly expand your customer service teams whenever you need to do so, without all the additional capital costs.

6: No Calls Unanswered

Ensure that no calls go unanswered by enabling VoIP to continue forwarding calls until they are answered. This means that when operatives from one team are very busy, operatives from another less busy team can take calls to support them. This is an important way to ensure that all your staff work to their best productivity levels.

7: Just Cheaper

Customer Service telephony is very expensive, VoIP on the other hand isn’t. You can easily integrate VoIP into your call centre environment and start to cut phone costs and reduce bills.

8: Control Centre

When you roll out VoIP across an entire contact centre, you can have complete control over calls. You can see who is calling, how long their calls are, how many calls they’ve missed and you can click through to speak to any of your operatives with a single click.

Get the most out of VoIP for your Customer Service Contact Centre environment with VoIP from Gradwell.

1: Total Control

With the Call Manager feature, you can have a complete employee list for all staff members that are using VoIP. Call any of them with a single click, check missed calls and numbers dialed, call lengths and on some features you can also listen in. This means that if you use VoIP for your contact centre environment, you can maintain complete control.

2: Speed Dial

Set up limitless speed dial numbers allowing you to quickly make calls without searching for and dialing in long numbers. One click puts you straight through.

3: Do Not Disturb

Undoubtedly one of the most frustrating things in any office is never getting anything done because the phone is always ringing. You don’t want to miss calls, but you can’t have your productivity frequently interrupted. VoIP technology allows your voice calls to be directed to your voicemail without the phone ringing at all.

4: Priority Calls

You may not want to be disturbed, but if you are awaiting a call from a colleague, client or superior, you can set priority alerts, allowing your phone to only ring if called by the person from whom you are awaiting the call. This means you can maintain your productivity levels without missing that vital call.

5: Discussion

If you need to have a three-way conversation between yourself, a colleague and a client, you can have a 3-way VoIP conference call. Since the VoIP system uses the Internet, you won’t have to pay extra for this, nor will you pay extra for calls if your colleague and client are on the opposite side of the world. Improve your ability to interact with others using VoIP.

6: Messaging

How often do you receive an important voicemail message but you know that you have to delete it eventually? What if it contains vital information, and you can’t write it down? With VoIP, you can receive your voicemail messages as wav files in your email inbox. Now you can listen to them anywhere in the world, store or share those messages with others.

7: Out of Office Messaging

You’re out of the office working on-site with a client; you’re not due back in the office until next week. A new lead has just left a message on office phone, and you may miss out on an important chance to convert this lead into a sale. What do you do? With VoIP it’s simple. All you do is wait for VoIP to send you a message to your mobile letting you know that you’ve received a message. Then you login to VoIP on your laptop and check your messages. VoIP means never missing that important voicemail.

8: Call Chaser

Don’t miss a call. VoIP has two excellent features for this. Option one will divert your calls to all your selected numbers at the same time. Option two will dial each of your select numbers until you pick up. Now you don’t ever have to miss that important sales call.

9: Remote Office

When you turn on the remote office function, you can route all of your calls to an alternate phone. So if you want to work from home this week, you won’t miss out. Plus, when you make a call, your work number will appear in the recipient’s caller ID.

10: Selective Forwarding

You can establish criteria so that only the important calls are forwarded to your alternate number. This means that you can avoid unnecessary calls and still connect with the important ones.

The rewards of switching to business VoIP are real, immediate and compelling. If your business wants to take advantage of the many productivity uses for VoIP, then contact Gradwell to find out how we can help you make the most of VoIP today.

Slower Speeds

They may say that they can provide fast speeds in your area, but the truth of the matter will really slow you down. Many cheap Internet services can only manage as little as 1-2MB, which is simply not good enough for today’s business broadband user. If you’ve signed up for a long contract with these cheap, slow Internet providers, you’ll be regretting it when you can’t get the speed you need. If your download speed is slow, imagine how terrible your upload speed is! If your business relies on speedy Internet, choose a business Internet service with speeds that really match your requirements. 

Download Limits

If like many businesses, your company relies on the sending and receiving of considerably large amounts of data each month, you may come unstuck with a cheap Internet service. They often impose unrealistically low download limits and charge you heavily if you go over your agreed usage. A business broadband user needs to have boundless limits on their downloads. 

High Quality Internet Telephony

Does your cheap broadband provider offer the kind of service that can support high quality voice telephony? If all you get is patchy quality with frequent drops in service, you simply can’t use that service for customer contact or client calls. Choose a business broadband provider that offers you a stable, reliable service for all your VoIP telephony requirements. 

More Down than Up

When you choose to sign up to a cheap Internet service you may discover to your cost that their service is down more than its up and running. To most businesses these days, downtime means a serious dent in the profits. Always choose a business broadband provider with the very best connection stability. 

Low Value Customer Service

When you choose a cheap Internet service, you often have to pay a premium price to call their customer service. When you do finally reach one of their operatives, they may be based outside the UK, and English may not be their first language. Poorly trained staff in oversees call centres at the end of premium phone lines means wasted time and money. When you select a business broadband provider, choose someone with a great record on customer service.

Before signing up for any business broadband package, check that all of the above areas have been satisfactorily discussed. If your business depends upon excellent communication and connectivity, choosing a cheap Internet service for your company could end up costing you much more than you save.

Save yourself time, money and hassle by switching your Business Internet Service to Gradwell, we’ve got the experience and expertise to keep your business running online 24/7.

1: FREE CALLS - You can call colleagues, clients, suppliers and well, anyone in the world that has VoIP, for free. There’s no phone charges and no line rental costs, it’s completely free.

2: CHEAP CALLS – If you can’t call VoIP to VoIP, then you can make extremely low-cost calls to users without VoIP. There is a charge, but it’s much cheaper than using a regular telephone or a mobile phone to contact them.

3: BE LOCAL – You can make calling your company cheaper for your clients and customers by giving them a local number to call you on VoIP. So whether you have customers in Shanghai and Helsinki and your base is in Manchester, it doesn’t matter, they call a number that’s local to them and the call comes straight into your VoIP.

4: BE GLOBAL – With VoIP, you can answer your calls anywhere in the world. Your customers dial the same number, but you can choose to answer from anywhere in the world. So if you take your laptop with you on business trips, your clients can still stay in touch. Cutting down on international call charges makes good financial sense for everyone.

5: ALWAYS ANSWER – It really doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can listen to your messages on the completely free VoIP answer machine.

6: FREE FORWARDING – No one should sit by their phone all day waiting for it to ring. If you need to be out and about, set your VoIP number to forward your calls through to your mobile and you won’t miss out on that important call.

7: ENCOURAGE OTHERS – Don’t be the only one in your organisation to benefit from the wonders of VoIP. Voice Over Internet Protocol can save the entire organisation money when it’s rolled out throughout your company.

8: JOIN THE PARTY – VoIP users can make conference calls with other VoIP users for free. This means that if your colleagues are spread throughout the world, you can still have a free phone conversation without incurring high charges.

9: MOBILE WITHOUT THE BILL – If your mobile phone can run VoIP software, then you can make free calls from your smart phone, which will cut your mobile bills considerably.

10: WORK FROM HOME – VoIP provides the flexibility to make the most of work-from-home opportunities. Internet telephony allows businesses of all sizes to reduce the capital costs of running a team of telesales or telemarketing operatives, while also enabling working from the comfort of their own homes.

Still need convincing? Get in touch with Gradwell today, we’ll be happy to demonstrate the exceptional financial benefits of using VoIP.

Was the domain that you wanted taken?

So, did you settle for something less than impressive?

Building and publishing a website is an important way of entering the global marketplace. Most experts agree that when choosing a domain name, the shorter and simpler names are probably the best. Keep it short and sweet, and if you can get it, get a dot-com because people are still more impressed by that than the UK or EU domains.

But since most of the shorter domain names are taken, then people have to choose longer domains and this is where they need help.

Creative spelling says that you’re annoying and that you think your potential customers are psychic. Any words that you would have to spell out to a client are also bad, they need to be intuitive, and you’re suggesting to potential clients that you don’t care about how they find you. But the Internet is all about finding and being found and if you want to be found, you need a domain that says what you do.

For instance, if you were an Office Cleaning Service working in London, you should always try CleanerLondon.com or OfficeCleaning.com first, but if they are gone, then it’s important to add a modifier. BestLondonCleaners.com for instance, allows you to say to tell everyone what you do and where, it also suggests that you are the best.

If you want to ensure that people don’t get confused between you and another company, then buy out all of the available extensions if you can.

Your domain name is your Internet trading name, it doesn’t matter what your real trading name is to people, as they will call your business by the domain name from now on.

There’s also a trick to choosing the right name here. If you’re very specific, like BestLondonCleaners, you can’t easily add a few pages about your photocopying business. So, counter to what we said above, you may wish to choose something that allows you to expand what you do at a later date. Think about Amazon.com for instance. The name Amazon has nothing to do with Books, DVDs or any of the things that they sell. This means that when they started to sell Garden Furniture, they weren’t restricted.

So, clearly there are two main choices to naming your domain. You can either choose something broad enough to encompass future expansion, or something very specific and targeted to what you do. Broad allows you more creativity with the name, but specific has greater SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) value and helps promote your name directly in the URL window.

Thirdly, you should consider your professional image. What you call yourself may be your professional online trading domain for a long time. Building up a reputation and switching domains later could be tricky. So, it’s vital that your domain name sends the right message about your business. It must present to your clients or customers the image that they think of when they think of your organization. This will help them find you online, but also helps to maintain your public image.

To solve this problem, businesses often give out direct lines for key individuals. Great for the personal touch – but this creates as many problems as it solves. For example, your caller now needs to keep a whole plethora of numbers for different people in your business, and then if they call when that person is on holiday or in a meeting, their call can go unanswered, losing you business.

An easy solution is to set-up mini call centre for the key areas of your business, like sales or support.

Here are four ideas on how you can use a business VoIP system to make it easier for your customers to do business with you.

1: Have one central number for your departments

By creating groups, you can use one phone number to call any number of phones within your business. At the Gradwell office, our 01225 800 808 sales number rings several phones at once, so calls are answered by the first available member of the sales team. This means quicker response time and a person on the end of the line. You can set this up via a VoIP control panels in a matter of minutes and change it whenever you like.

2: Create a voice menu for your central number

It’s likely that you’ll also need a main number for your business, which people call when they’re not sure exactly who they need, or as the number you publish in directories, etc. Some companies also find that having just one really great memorable number for makes communicating with their business as simple as possible. When you have a variety of enquiries coming through to one number, you can get people through to a real human being much more quickly with a simple voice menu. With VoIP you can record your message from your handset and set-up and change the rules in the control panel.

We have direct numbers to sales, support, billing, etc, but we also have a main number, 01225 800 800, which provides callers with all those options. Therefore people who want to remember just one number and people who prefer to call direct, can do just that.

3. Create a call queue

You’ve experienced it. We’ve experienced it. Calling someone only to get an engaged tone over and over, for what seems like forever. It can be very frustrating.

By creating a call queue from your VoIP control panel you can give you callers the choice of waiting to talk to someone, rather than having to call again and again until finally getting through.

In creating a call queue, you also gain the possibility of intermittent messages during the hold music. This allows you to direct people to other ways of getting in touch like email or web chat and advertise new services, up coming events or the latest company news. 

4. If you are experiencing problems, save your time and theirs

If you are experience problems with the service you supply to your customers you are very likely to have a number of people calling to ask you about it. With VoIP, you can quickly, from the comfort of your handset, record a message letting them know they are not the only person with the problem, and you are on the case. This leaves the customer with an answer and your support staff free to deal with separate problems.

These four simple steps can change the experience of calling your business from time-consuming and tricky, to quick and easy – helping you concentrate on day-to-day business.

Losing just one staff member can affect the way your company works, but that need not be the case. Internet telephony frees you and your employees from the office – enabling flexible home working.

We recently had a member of staff come down with the sniffles. They thought it best to stay away from the office, which was fine by us! They unplugged their phone from their desk, took it home, plugged it into their router and just carried on working – same phone, same number, same settings. Along with web-based email and a company instant messaging service, they were able to work from home as if they were in the office.

Being able to work outside of the traditional office space also allows employers to become more flexible with working hours. If a member of staff needs to come in later than usual because they perhaps need to wait for a delivery in the morning, visit the dentist or look after a loved one, they needn’t stay late at the office to make up for missed hours. With their VoIP phone and an Internet connection, they can continue to work while at home and still leave the office at the normal time!

Our award-winning VoIP can help your business continue to work as normal. It gives your employees the tools to be able to work to flexible hours and overcome any out of office obstacles.

Checklist for effective home working:

• A reliable, secure broadband connection
• A VoIP phone, registered to your office’s account
• An email account accessible through a browser
• A comfortable working environment, free of distractions
   

For example, I find it really tiresome when I call a company about a particular issue only to be passed from one department to another and asked to repeat my details and reason for calling at each juncture.

Equally annoying is being kept on hold or in a queue for ages only to be told the person I need to speak to is out of the office.

These experiences and others like them lead people to look for alternative companies to do business with – and I’m sure you don’t want your customers to be doing that!

Fortunately, with Gradwell’s business VoIP system you can easily improve your customer service and ensure your customers remain your customers.

First, with our simple software interface, you can configure your phone system to ensure that calls get answered as quickly as possible – and by the most relevant people. And given the portability of VoIP, your people can still make and take calls when they’re working away or from home (which can be critical when a customer insists on dealing with a particular member of your team).

What’s more, our system can integrate with your CRM software to give you instant information about the person calling, and our flexible voicemail features let you receive and store your messages more easily. You can even record calls, both for future reference and to improve on the service you provide.

With VoIP, it’s easy to work smarter. And when your people work smarter, your business benefits. As you know, VoIP is a very valuable tool for a wide variety of reasons, not least:

• Cost savings
• Improve your business image
• Improve your business effectiveness

What are you waiting for?

Of course, you may be able to set up some kind of call forwarding, but it can be a bit of a fuss and you need to remember to turn it off when you return. Or you may have an answerphone system, which is fine, but I’m sure anyone calling would prefer to speak to you than leave a message – and I know you’d rather talk to them straight away.
With Gradwell’s business VoIP system, when you move around you take your handy VoIP phone with you and your number follows.

Plug your phone into a computer at home, at another office or anywhere that has an Internet connection, and to the outside world it’s business as usual. And not only does your phone number follow you, but your whole system does too. Log-in through our easy-to-use website and you can do everything from placing calls with a click of a button to dealing with your voicemail, setting call diverts and managing all other aspects of the system.

So, where traditional phone systems can hold your people and your business back, business VoIP propels you forwards.

Gradwell’s business VoIP system makes it easier for you to win more customers.

For instance, in some areas of business, customers prefer to deal with local companies. Our system sets you free from the constraints of phone numbers that just relate to the geographic location of your office or offices.
Now you can own numbers in areas throughout the country and appear to be a local company in as many areas as you choose. Similarly, if you enjoy working in a rural location but your customers are more likely to choose a company with a city presence, you can have a number that makes it possible. And if your need is for non-geographic numbers such as 0845 and 0870, we can supply them too.

Of course, VoIP is about more than making your business look more professional. Our system logs the details of all calls, giving you valuable insight about your customers and prospects. For example, by understanding more about when people call, you can ensure sufficient staff are on hand at those times of day. And by learning more about where people are calling from, you can track marketing activity and focus on those areas and others like them.
On top of all of this, our system’s easily controlled call management features allow you to ensure that calls from your prospects are answered more quickly and by the most relevant people. After all, having gone to the trouble of attracting more customers, you’ll want to make sure they can actually get through.

However, with Gradwell’s business VoIP system you can make some serious savings.

For starters, all calls made within your business are free – and that includes calls between offices in different locations and calls to and from staff working from home. And it isn’t just your colleagues that you can call for free – phone a VoIP user anywhere in the world and you won’t pay a penny for the call.

Of course, not everyone is on VoIP just yet, but with our system that doesn’t matter. When you make calls to mobiles, or to local, national or international landlines, you’ll still save money as our call charges are cheaper than most other suppliers. Even when the headlines look better with the bigger players, we’re sure that our customers make worthwhile savings overall.

And the savings don’t end there.

Gradwell’s system still gives you a real phone on your desk, but is operated through a simple website. This means you avoid having to make a capital investment in a large, expensive switchboard (it makes future expansion of your system simple and cost-effective too). Furthermore, our system means you can also do away with the nuisance that is multiple BT line rental.

With our Multi-User VoIP packages starting at just £8 a month, and some packages including bundled landline and mobile minutes, the ways in which you can start making some serious savings just keep on coming.