Small business 4 line phones are generally workhorses and are easy to setup and use. I recommend them for many clients specifically because they are reliable regular phones.The benefits of these for small business are: Inexpensive ? you can buy them at most office supply stores, on line or used at Ebay Ease of setup ? basic plug & play. Plug it into the wall and it will work. If you need to get an adaptor it?s at Radio Shack, not special ordered. You don?t need a technician to install them if your office has been wired for the lines. Works on regular dial tone ? no need to have extra bandwidth or special adaptors Ease of use ? most importantly you don?t want to have to learn or teach someone how to answer the phone. You won?t have to call a technician to make changes to the programming. I suggest not getting phones with voice mail built in. If the lines are busy your customer will not be able to leave a message. Combine a 4 line phone system in the office with a voice mail to email service outside the office and your customers will be able to reach you or leave a message. When you are running your business you don?t want to worry about the phone. You want it to ring and have a clear conversation with your customer. If you have trouble hearing them or you get disconnected all the features won?t matter. If your office has only a few people and 2 to 8 phone lines a 4 line phone may be a great option. For more small business phone tips visit my blog at www.allcalltechnologies.com/blog.
Write up your business plan. A business plan can provide you with a clear outline of what you want to do and how you are going to do it. It can also help you gather your ideas together, fine-tune your business idea, and help you secure funding if needed.
Specifically for an answering service business, you need to determine the type of business structure you will be creating, whether it's a proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation. You should mention your services, packages, and pricing structure to determine how much capital you will bring in and how many clients you will need to book to get yourself in a profit margin.
Check with all local, state, and federal guidelines for establishing a telephone answering service. Follow the rules, and file any necessary paperwork to create your business. For instance, do you live in an area where it is legal to work from home? Are there any special guidelines you must follow to work from home in your area? Are there any other zoning concerns?
Open a bank account solely for your business funds. Use the money from this account to purchase your business equipment and pay your utilities. Do not make any personal purchases out of this account. Deposit all business income to this account, and withdraw paychecks from there to place in your personal account.
Invest in phones and phone lines. Start small, because you do not want too many lines and not enough clients to fill them. Look for a phone that features the ability to transfer back and forth from 1 line to another so you can answer and take messages for different clients from a single location. Your phone system should also accommodate several different mailboxes to catch messages for calls that come in when you cannot answer them.
Set up 1 phone line for each business. When you've run out of room for phones or your phone company says you cannot have any more lines, your business has expanded enough to need an office space and additional employees. One line per business is easier to manage than multiple lines for the same client. Starting with 1 line and 1 client will make it easier for you to gauge your workload to determine what you can handle.
Contact various businesses via telephone or email to determine if they are interested in your services. Medical businesses are an ideal place to start because their patient schedule often makes it hard for someone to be available to answer the phone. Use your business plan to pitch your pricing, service offerings, and hours of availability.
Create a file for each business. The file should detail each company's requirements for taking and delivering messages and the hours they want you answering the phones. Place copies of all correspondence, including the messages you take for them, inside this file.
Set your work hours and work accordingly. Be concise in every message, and make sure to include any important details the caller wishes to convey to your client. Send the messages to the client via email or fax. Allow the client to choose the agreed-upon method for receiving messages
NOTE:There are many question that I would ask a client prior to designing networks and presenting a solution. The solution here is an overview GENERAL solution and not detailed.
My recommendation would be to go with a Server/Thin client network. You would have all your apps, os, and line of business (LOB) in one place. (server) This is easy for troubleshooting, updates, patch work, etc. It will also lower your cost of ownership (TCO) I would also recommend MS Windows 2008 Small Business server as the os as it would give you greater services now and when you are ready to expand/grow your business. One down side to this network: if the server goes down, all pc (clients) go down. Again, my recommendation to this would be the server as the primary server (PDC) and another server or pc as the secondary server (Backup or BDC).
By going with 8 separate pc networked together, you would have to pay for each pc, each os, each antivirus, perform updates on each unit, etc. This would be repeatitive, time consuming and costly. Centralized computing would ease technical and practical demands.
Each network is as unique as the users. If you would like more information catered to your specific network feel free to forward your needs/concerns to [email protected]. I usually do my best to address all concerns, user needs and diagram of proposed network setup, equipment needs and estimated cost.
easiest solution is to avoid their sync stuff all together, i've almost never gotten it to work correctly. what i generally do is set up the client station as a "stand-alone" and put the server address for the server name. that usually does the trick, only lick is that if the server goes down, your toast, the client goes down too.
RCA &
GEt offers a handy 4 line business phone that's perfect for most small businesses.
Have up to 8 lines by stacking 2 sets of phones on your desk. It's easy to setup
because it doesn't require any special phone control center or software. Just hook
them up like any other 1 line or 2 line phones system and your business is ready to
go. You'll have up to 8 phone lines with the ability to place calls on hold,
transfer, conferencing, hands free speakerphone and much more
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