Here’s a feature that’s as simple as it sounds. The RingMe button gives your customers the ability to contact you directly from your website with a simple click of their mouse, free of charge. Put a RingCentral RingMe button on your blog, website—even your Microsoft Outlook® email signature—with minimal effort. Here’s how:

1) Log in to your RingCentral account

2) Click RingMe Options under CALL SETTINGS

3) Choose your settings

Choose from a variety of button sizes and styles. Configure your RingMe options to route calls to your company greeting, specific extensions, or department queues. Once you’ve configured your options, just copy the code and paste it onto your site or wherever you want customers to see it.

Once your customers click, they’ll be asked to provide their number. And like magic, RingCentral will connect you to automatically.

Want to learn more? Check out this short video showing the power of Ringme.

Most people get a local number when they start their business and don’t realize until much later that they should have gotten a toll free number. The signs are there, but most businesspeople don’t recognize them.

Take this short survey to help you decide if it is time to make the switch.

Y/N Question 1. Are the majority of my customers outside of my area code? 2. Does my company have multiple departments? 3. Is my local number hard to remember? 4. Does I sell products or services online? 5. Do I get many customer support calls? 6. Do I have offices or employees across the country? 7. Would my customers call more often if I had a toll free number?

 

If you answered yes to 1-3 questions, you may not need a toll free number, but might want to look into it.
If you answered yes to 4-5 questions, you are on the borderline and may benefit by getting a toll free number. If you said yes to 6-7 questions, then you definitely need a toll free number. This will give a new dimension to your business.

Photo by Leo Reynolds

When you decide to form a small- to medium-sized business, the first steps are obvious: think of something people want, get a DBA, hire employees, etc. After you have created the company, then it is time to get to work, right? Not necessarily. In today’s technology age, there are several steps that you should do now.

1) The Business Plan

Developing a business plan is a must, but it doesn’t need to be complex. A few pages outlining your business overview, industry background, product or service, business model, strategy & team provides the foundation of your plan. Having a solid business plan is a requirement to get SBA (Small Business Administration) loans. For guidance, take a look at Score’s business plan template.

2) Raise Capital

It’s not an easy time to raise capital for a new business. Many larger institutions have reduced lending programs for small businesses and venture capital has seen a downturn over the last couple years. The bright spot in local small business lending seems to currently be with local credit unions. Able to more intimately assess risk in their local markets, some credit unions have still been actively underwriting SBA loans.

3) Legal Structure

If you plan on bringing on partners or investors or will be signing contracts, you’ll want to set up a legal structure and incorporate your company. Your main options setting up as Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, or Corporation. Each structure has its advantages & benefits. Services such as LegalZoom provide cost-effective online tools to help guide you through this process.

4) Protect Your Company’s Name

Securing your brand identity is important, and becomes increasingly so as time goes by. The USPTO website has a section for trademarks where one can conduct a search to see if another business has an existing name similar to yours, and if they are in your industry.

5) Establish a Web Presence

Creating a website is essential these days. Your website needs to be much more than a postcard on the web if it’s going to be a lead generation machine. The cost of choosing a domain and hosting your site has come down dramatically over the last few years. Not to be ignored are social media options like Facebook, Twitter and a blog. These can give you a huge boost to your Google visibility.

6) Phone System

The telephone will be the primary means of sales, support and business relations for your new enterprise. Choosing a toll free number (such as 1-800-Widgets) will allow you to take calls from across the country. You’ll want to consider getting a virtual pbx which will provide the power and functionality of a Fortune 500 phone system, but with no hardware to buy or maintain. Even if your company has only one employee, you can also take advantage of multiple extensions. You can create virtual departments, make announcements and route calls from any extension to any number—your home, office, or cell.

7) Create Your Business Identity

Customizing your own letterhead, business cards, and even e-mail signature with your company name and logo helps establish credibility and brand recognition. It also helps spread the word. Once you create a company logo, use it everywhere; on business cards, brochures, letterhead, your website, even in your e-mail signature.

If you do these seven steps before you open for business, it will save you a lot of time in the long run and make your business run smoother from the get-go. And make sure to join us on Facebook, where we are growing our online conversation with our customers. Find out the latest updates, ask questions, learn tips, and stay connected.

Photos by Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake

It’s a simple fact: Customers use your number to reach your company. So it makes sense to deploy local numbers where you want to reach more customers and explore new markets.

Get started by taking a look at your call logs to see where most of your calls are coming from.

• If you’re a nationwide business with a toll-free number, use Call Logs to look for opportunities in places where you’d like to do more business. For instance, if you don’t receive a lot of calls on the West Coast, consider purchasing local numbers in metropolitan areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
• If you’re a local business in a major city, but get regular calls from neighboring cities, consider adding numbers in those area codes—or even getting a toll-free number—to help you cast a wider net.
• Most callers won’t know they can use your number for calling and faxing. Consider adding a direct fax-only line, especially if you get a lot of faxes.

The more accessible you are to your customers, the more likely they are to rely on your services. And that can help expand your reach into new markets.

We take a rather complex term and break it down into its feature components using the example of the Virtual Office.

As we mentioned in a previous post on cloud computing, the term itself is hotly debated and its definitions are segmented. So let’s use the example of how Cloud Computing has allowed for the “Virtual Office.”

Cloud computing, at its core, is the ability for someone to take a service like a business phone system and “rent” its usage to a wide variety of customers . Because it’s cheaper and more resource efficient for a single vendor to offer services this way, it means that the end consumers have to pay far less than traditional, non-cloud based services of a similar nature.

RingCentral Office is a perfect example. Let’s say a 20 employee company is growing and wants to expand in a new location cost effectively – one that will also have remote satellite offices where employees will work from home.

Traditionally, this would mean that this company has to:

1. Order a new punch-key PBX (phone system) from a traditional hardware vendor who would charge about $1,000 per phone/desk.
2. Call the local telecommunications company to install a T1 line which contains 24 working phone lines. While the cost of this T1 could range from $300 to $700 per month, the real pain is the installation time.
3. After the hardware has been configured and installed, the same vendor that sold the phone system offers training to the company employees (for additional training fees).
4. After the phone system is bought, the T1 lines from the phone company have been installed and the employees trained on the new phone system, then it’s time for the remote offices and on-the-road sales staff to “integrate” into the new office phone system. And how do they do that? By learning how to forward phone calls on their new office desk phones, of course!
5. Any new moves, adds, or changes (known as MACs) to the phone system often require that the vendor who initially sold the phone system come out (referred to in the industry as “the white van”) and make the changes to the phone system itself.

If this company subscribed to a Business Phone System that runs “in the cloud”, the benefits are compelling:

1. Since the hardware & software that controls a business-class phone system is now delivered over the Internet as a service, this company gets fully-configured VoIP phones delivered without having to buy anything else. The only left to do is connect the phones to the Internet.
2. Since the VoIP phones also have a web interface that controls the phone and call-flow, there’s no training of employees on the new phone system required. It’s very easy to master a VoIP phone. One can even take an interactive demo to see just how easy it is.
3. These Business Phone Systems can be added to your smartphones as well. Remote office workers and road warriors can now truly “integrate” with their office desk phones. Apps like RingCentral Mobile for iPhone can be downloaded and set to show the business Caller ID, even from a personal phone.

Now that’s a simple example of how cloud computing is allowing the virtual office to be “virtual.” Because with cloud computing for business phone systems, every phone whether it’s in the headquarters or living on a smart-phone are all virtual phone systems.

The revolution has begun!

How many times have you wished you recorded a call? Well, now you can with Call Recording. Simply press *9 to start a recording, and press *9 to stop it. Use this feature to record calls on-the-fly.

You can also:

• Customize recording notifications
• Retrieve recordings from your call logs
• Forward recordings through email to coworkers

It works with any device you’re using, which means you can record calls from home, at the office, or even from your cell phone. This can be particularly useful in companies that run customer service, training, and/or support lines, and that want to keep accurate records for legal purposes.

Speaking of legal, it’s a good idea to brush up on your legalese before you start *9ing every call—keep in mind there are several federal and state laws that regulate the recording of telephone calls and other electronic communications. We’re not taking any responsibility for what you do with call recording, and we’re certainly not letting you use our get out of jail free card, either.

We couldn’t have done it without the support of our loyal base of users and technologists worldwide. Thank You.

RingCentral First to Offer True Enterprise-Class PBX “in the Cloud”

Cloud computing has become the new buzz word. One sees it being bounced around as often as “information superhighway” and “Web 2.0″ once were. But in the world of enterprise telephony, (not an accurate definition… this means self–provisioning by the user from the credit card order screen.) From a vendor perspective, customer self-provisioning and automated account and DID setup equates to lower operating costs which, in turn, translates to lower prices for customers. In July 2009 RingCentral Office launched, offering a true cloud computing PBX service.

iPhone Becomes Business-Class

Recognizing that many small to medium-sized business owners are using iPhones as their primary business communication tool, RingCentral built an iPhone application that many say finally makes the iPhone truly a business-class Smartphone. Visual voicemail, send and receive faxes and the fact that my business number now shows up in Caller ID, even though I’m using my personal phone, has made my life so much easier. All business calls that come from my RingCentral desk phone have their unique ring-tone on my iPhone. Can I tell you how much easier this has made my life?

RingCentral Launches in England

RingCentral launched its award winning PBX service in the United Kingdom, home to the best curry-chips and accents on the planet. Now, our friends across the pond can get a Freephone 0800, 0845 or local number for their UK business.

CallerID in Our Control

We can now enter the name of ourselves or our business within the RingCentral console to insert into the Caller ID field of our call recipients. Many have been requesting this feature for quite some time (including me) and it’s great to see that it’s finally here. For inside sales teams to high-level B2B phone calls, this feature is invaluable for making sure that each outbound call has the highest chance of getting picked up.

It’s a new year for your business – time to save money, be more productive, and advertise smarter.

1) I Will Test the Office Phone System

Old toll free numbers can get lost, employees can move or switch titles and cubes and old numbers may lead to dead extensions. It’s not uncommon for a small business to lose anywhere from 2% to 15% of its potential sales and customer retention simply by not checking to see that their phone system turns every single extension into the proper employee and that each number has a voicemail box that is checked. Promotions, new titles, new departments, and even old employee business cards should be checked by actually calling these extensions.

One exercise that we like to do to test voicemail systems is to wait after hours, then call the phone extensions with this message:

“Hi, this is ______,

I’m testing our phone system and was wondering if you could let me know that you’ve gotten this voicemail by sending me an e-mail to ____@___.com and leaving me your extension and phone number where you reached this voicemail. This will ensure that our customers can always reach us, thanks!”

While this can be time consuming, it’s a critical (but critically boring) task that is one of the easiest ways for the office manager to boost customer sales & retention. We don’t mention this often enough, but how your customers get presented with your voice mail greetings and the ease of your employee directory (if you have one) is one of the first impressions of your company and brand.

2) I Will Follow, Comment, then Tweet

2010 can be the year your business finally launches on Twitter. But be forewarned – success on this social media juggernaut won’t have a “if you build it, they will come” strategy.

If you’re a B2B business, a common way to build your Twitter “presence” is to find the influential KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) on Twitter and follow their “tweets”. Comment and contribute to their posts and let them know that you appreciate their content. Over time a certain portion of these folks will follow you as well, and they in turn will become your conduit for information about new products and company PR. Because followers of tweets can “retweet” (repost your tweet to their own network of followers), one message about e.g. a new break-through skin cream to a few dozen dermatologists can spread like wildfire.

If you’re a retail or consumer oriented business, a commonly used method for getting Twitter followers is to offer specials, coupons, and rebates to those that follow your tweets. This is commonly done by making such offers “time sensitive”. The real-time nature of Twitter allows such offers to be made as “coupon alerts” to an increasingly wider array of people.

Remember, Twitter marketing is a continued investment whose ROI will increase over time as your followers increase in size and relevancy.

3) I Will Finally Start Tracking My Marketing Spend

According to Google, only about 5% of AdWords customers use Conversion Counter, much less track the phone calls their online ads generate. There’s a famous saying amongst professional marketers, “I know I’m wasting half my advertising dollars, I just don’t know which half”. But that can be easily solved by buying low cost toll free numbers that can be tied to specific marketing campaigns and lead generation drives.

For example: Having a Google AdWords ad list a new trackable toll free number means that you can not only track the ROI of your ad spend by the click, but by the actual number of phone call inquiries these ads produced. Same goes for Yellow Page ads, print ads in magazines and even brochures and flyers.

These low cost toll free numbers are easy to get and easy to track call activity online, so why not order several and tie them to specific marketing campaigns and track the productivity of each? It sounds cumbersome, but virtual office providers make it so easy to order such toll free numbers and track the call activity online. Your CEO will be amazed at how much you can say about what advertising investments are producing and which should be cut.

How much did that $5,000 YellowPages ad produce in sales or sales leads last year? A trackable toll free number can answer that and more in 2010. Seriously, it’s time.

Find out more about these services and see how RingCentral compares: Employee Directories, Visual Voicemail and Toll Free Numbers.

Top 4 trends we saw in 2009 for SMBs.

1 – Social Networking at Work

No, it doesn’t mean that more people at work are spending time on Facebook and Twitter (which they probably are), but that SMB owners are actually using these sites to promote their business online.

Facebook:

While there are numerous controversies brewing about Facebook’s latest change to their privacy policy, what this means for small business owners is that placing content on your business’s Facebook fan page will not only have content seen by other Facebook users, but by the Googlebot itself. This means that Facebook pages with pictures, posts, reviews, etc. can now be indexed by Google and – gasp – show up in search results! Potentially scary if you’re a business owner that likes to post “questionable photos” on your profile, but a golden opportunity for those who want to rank higher for valuable keywords. Facebook and Search Engine Optimization – now with 30% more Google!

Twitter:

Though it had seen explosive growth amongst consumer users to keep track of what celebrities, friends and other pundits had to say about current events, in 2009 Twitter became a resource for small business owners to keep subscription lists of “followers”. Now SMB owners could easily blast promotional news, coupons, etc. in a manner that was both cheap (free) and legal (no e-mail spam complaints).

2 – Cloud Computing Takes the Throne

It’s official – what was called “hosted software” and became “virtual software” became “OnDemand software” and now (drum roll please) “Cloud Computing”. While this term can mean a multitude of different things, what it really means for small business owners is that they can now get accounting software, customer service software, their phone system (hint, hint) and Salesforce automation – all as software that is delivered over the Web, controlled by their browser and paid for in monthly installments. In fact, the last time a small business owner bought a copy of Microsoft Office for $300, twenty-five other small business owners signed up for Google Docs.

3 – Mobile Computing Continues Strong Growth

The major carriers now offer “netbook” laptops at price-leader fees meaning they are willing to lose money on the netbook in order to make it up on the 2-year commitment of wireless data fees. Combine that with the increase in use of smart-phones at loss-leader prices and the ubiquitous rise of mobile computing is here. Of course, mobile computing for small business owners wouldn’t be an exceptional phenomenon if there weren’t actual applications for SMBs. The meteoric rise of Apple’s App Store (with plenty of business applications like accounting tools and credit card payment gateways) means that mobile computing for SMBs is here to stay – and grow, grow, grow.

4 – Creative Financing & Rise of the Local Credit Union

For many small businesses, financing and credit lines are critical elements to being able to procure materials/products and invest in future growth. But the financial collapse of 2008 and 2009 have not only caused many large banks to fold, but consolidation means that there are fewer choices for small business banking. In downtown San Francisco, they saw over a dozen banks dwindle down to a handful of options. Add to that the fact that these handful of banks have pulled many of the credit lines and credit products available to small business owners and you have a conundrum indeed. Twelve banks competing with each other down to less than five and all five no longer offer new small business owners unsecured credit lines.

This is where the local credit unions have been stepping in. Operating in the shadow of their flashier, bigger national counter-parts, credit unions have recently seen more small business owners apply for loans that larger banks no longer offer. The ability for a community-based lender to asses local risk and offer a credit line is a necessary driver for SMBs and one we hope will continue to grow in 2010. In addition, credit unions have been more apt to offer SBA (Small Business Administration) loans that has received more monies recently from the Obama administration.

Call logs are a great way to monitor how business is doing. Would you like to know how many new leads you’re generating? Count up the number of incoming calls to your number. How productive are your employees? Take a look at the telephone activity for individual extensions. All the data is there for you to see.

For today’s Tuesday tip, we’ll show you how to have your company call logs delivered to you so you can get a regular snapshot of your business activity. Making adjustments based on telephone usage can go a long way to improving your overall business strategy.

To receive regular delivery of your call logs:

1. Log in
2. Select Call Log > Delivery Settings

Your delivery options are pretty self-explanatory;  you can select how often you’d like your call logs delivered (daily, weekly, monthly) and where you’d like your call logs emailed to.

That’s it! You’re now on your way to micromanaging bliss…