Web Worker Daily

We’ve all heard the horror stories of difficult clients. Anyone offering client services has been there.

No company can function effectively when confronted with clients who operate from a place of fear — which is often at the root of most difficult clients you encounter. You can’t do your job well or be recognized for a job well done when your client contact is inadvertently — or deliberately — standing in your way. Read the rest of this entry »

We at WebWorkerDaily review a lot of web apps. Since many of us — and many of you — have iPhones, I like to keep tabs on web apps we’ve written about, to see whether they get a companion iPhone app. So here’s a list of seven useful iPhone apps for some of the better web apps that we’ve reviewed.

1. Shoeboxed. Organize your receipts and business cards through this service (see our review here). With the web app, you scan in what you want to save and organize or mail in your “shoebox” of items to scan and let Shoeboxed do it for you. The results are searchable and easy to organize. With the iPhone app, you can take a photo to digitize a receipt or card. Read the rest of this entry »

File sync and backup service SugarSync (which we’ve blogged about before) just announced new small-business friendly features, including a central admin feature to manage from three to 100 users collaborating and sharing files using the app. The new package also includes flexible group pricing plans starting at $29.99 per month, with no setup fees and free phone support.

While speaking with the CEO of SugarSync, I quickly realized that my post about running a virtual team was missing a critical component: backup. As I listened to the company’s presentation of its product, my mind began working overtime. SugarSync isn’t just about backing up files securely in the cloud. It can also be used for secure file sharing, collaboration and file syncing with cross-platform and mobile device access and compatibility. Read the rest of this entry »

When I heard that the folks at Pressitt in the UK had launched the beta of their social media news release tool, I decided to check it out.

Pressitt says the site’s focus is on providing journalists and bloggers with a primary research tool for stories. PR types can upload releases into the system that should then be available to these journalists and bloggers. Read the rest of this entry »

As my virtual social media marketing firm Conversify grows, my business partner Monique Elwell and I are forced to assess and implement technologies to help us do our work better and faster. Both Monique and I are committed to keeping our company virtual and flexible.

While exploring solutions for a phone system that could help our company appear more cohesive and communicate more effectively, Monique started looking at VoIP switching systems or “virtual PBXs.” She focused specifically on RingCentral and Virtual PBX. We’re sharing some of our findings here because we know that many of you may be in the same situation as us: tying together dispersed teams under one phone system to have a more unified corporate presence.

Monique put the following list of questions together that we had to ask ourselves while researching phone systems for our company.

1. How many lines do we need? Here we mean the number of phone lines that you expect to be speaking on simultaneously.
2. How many extensions do we need? An extension rings to an individual, or to a department (such as sales).
3. How much time do we spend on the phone? While we use a lot of email, we decided to go with unlimited minutes to avoid any surprise costs at the end of the month.
4. Do we need a system that is incoming calling only, or one allowing us to transfer to other coworkers? We would prefer being able to transfer calls for convenience.
5. Do we have to purchase a special phone or use the ones we have? Some virtual PBXs and phone systems do come with hardware while others are entirely online.

RingCentral and Virtual PBX are systems that allow your team members to be in multiple locations and are priced similarly so we’ll talk about those first.

For our team, we each have either a cell phone, a home or work landline or a Skype number that we use as our work numbers. But we lack the consistency of a common greeting messaging tree that instructs, “Thank you for calling Conversify. Press 1 for Aliza, press 2 for Monique, etc.”. While traditional offline PBXs offering this functionality can cost in the tens of thousands dollar range, there are dozens of services offering virtual PBXs and their costs are within reach of even a small startup company,

Ring Central and Virtual PBX use VoIP which these days is nearly indistinguishable from a regular landline, and the quality is far superior to cell phones.

Both Ring Central and Virtual PBX — and many other similar services — offer some standard features:

• Auto attendant. This is the voice that answers company calls and automatically routes them based on caller input.
• Call rules. This allows, for example, “Press 1 for Sales; Press 2 for Marketing.”
• Follow me services. This feature gives you the ability to have your calls forward to the phone number where you’re available.
• Custom greetings. This is the ability to record your own greetings for each person or department.
• Web-based system management. Being able to manage your phone system online means you can handle issues and changes from any Internet-connected computer.
• Virtual fax. This feature is nice for us because we are currently using a virtual fax system, so this can save some monthly fees.
• Dial by name directories. This allows callers to enter the first three letters of a team member’s name to find them easily.

Some virtual PBX systems offer the following options with or without additional costs:

• Integrated conferencing
• Vanity, virtual or toll-free numbers

The big difference between Virtual PBX or Ring Central and some other systems is that these two allow you to transfer calls to internal lines. Both also allow you to purchase a phone from them or use your own phone. Some systems even have a robust set of features to handle call centers but we weren’t looking for that kind of functionality.

Both Ring Central and Virtual PBX were easy to set up. For Ring Central, all we had to do was plug in the pre-programmed Linksys IP phone they sent to us to test. We’d have to buy the phone if we decided to use it along with their service. The phone looks like a regular office phone and includes a power cord and Ethernet cable.

For Virtual PBX, we chose to use our own phone so the set up was slightly more complicated but with this option, we would not have to buy a phone. We inputted our individual local phone numbers into our account on the Virtual PBX’s web site and took a two-minute tutorial on how to use the system.

International Routing

Monique identified a challenge we are struggling with while exploring virtual PBX systems is that we have a UK presence and don’t want it to appear separate from our U.S.-based team. Every service we spoke with charges by the minute for calls to the UK. “For a small company likes ours, that could double our phone expenses,” Monique explained.

We also want a “local” virtual number to be used in the UK although this is less of a priority. We have considered giving our UK guy a US softphone but that means that when calls come from the UK, they are first sent to the PBX and then directed back to the UK so that would most likely degrade the quality of the call. So haven’t forked over any cash to a virtual PBX service just yet. Until we can figure out whether a virtual PBX can solve this international issue, we’re still using a Skype number.

What virtual PBX system do you use — if you use one — and what do you like about it?

Image credit: RingCentral.com

There is never enough time in the day to keep up with the constant barrage of social media. Take Twitter, for example. Almost daily I have clients and colleagues ask me “Isn’t Twitter really a waste of time?” and “I hear Twitter is losing users faster than they’re gaining them, so why should I join?” The rest of us who are on Twitter — even those of us who have been using it for years — are still figuring out how to best fit Twitter into our overall communications toolkit.

So how do you keep from “wasting” time on Twitter? Here’s my advice on how to spend no more than 15 minutes a day on your Twitter account but still reap the rewards, particularly for your work. This is not a good tactic for everyone, but if you or someone you know is very resistant to Twitter and simply needs a manageable plan for tweeting, you can try this at work or home. Read the rest of this entry »

I just received an email message about the demise of Projecho, little more than three months after first hearing about the easy conferencing application during its big PR push.

What do you do when an application you’ve adopted and incorporated into your work process suddenly goes under? Nancy recently wrote about why she doesn’t trust the cloud for her work, but when you run a virtual company or are part of a virtual team, it isn’t realistic to keep all of your work on a local computer. Even if you aren’t a virtual worker, there are still apps that die quick deaths every day — their demise can leave you out in the cold. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m all about gadgets and doodads that have specific functions, are easy to use, and actually help me do something better. I’ve been seeing one gadget in particular at tech conferences lately that really caught my eye.

The telescopic XShot camera extender ($29.95) is a simple but “wow” device that allows you to mount your digital camera and then extend it away from you so you can include yourself in the pictures. At conferences, however, the clever device is being used by attendees to raise their cameras above the heads of a crowd or audience to more easily capture footage of speakers onstage or simply get a more interesting view of the room. The XShot 2.0 gives you as little as 9 inches and up to 3 feet of extension. Read the rest of this entry »