Businesses rise and fall on the strength of their communication abilities. The more ways a customer has to reach you — and the more ways you have to reach the customer –the better your chances of making a sale. So, what do you do if you’re a one or two person operation and field works leaves no one to man the office? The budget just won’t stretch to another body, not even a minimum wage one to answer the phone.
That seems easy, just get a cell phone, right? BUT, have you ever tried to do business with someone who kept interrupting you to answer the phone? Annoying, isn’t it? How long did you stick around for that? As for the business person, now instead of paying someone to answer his phone, he’s paying astronomical cell phone bills.
Amoeba has been having some of those issues and he recently started looking into VOIP services. There are a lot of VOIP services springing up that will allow one to talk over the internet for free. That solves the problem of the astronomical cell phone bills, but how do your land line customers call in?
Believe it or not, I can answer that. Let me tell you about Toktumi. Tokumi is a virtual PBX service for small businesses — an internet switchboard talking care of all your business calls. Pretty cool huh? Right now Toktumi is offering a 30 day free trial and services start at $14.95 per month, much cheaper than an extra body or the cell phone bill. (Okay, you will still need a phone, but you won’t need to carry the most expensive plan to cover your minutes.)
I would love to have someone answer all of my phone calls.