How Call Forwarding with VoIP Phone Services Gives Businesses Added Flexibility

how call forwarding with voip phone services gives businesses added flexibility

Several features of VoIP phone services are designed to make businesses more flexible. Instead of being trapped in an office waiting for hours on a single phone call, businesses can redirect their calls easily with VoIP. This is ideal for businesses that want to provide 24/7 customer service or for businesses that have remote employees.

Businesses can use call forwarding to redirect calls to mobile phones or other VoIP phones. With this feature, businesses can boast about their availability hours concerning their customer service.

This Tech Target article accurately describes call forwarding. The article explains how the feature can be used to give businesses flexibility:

“Call forwarding is a telephone service that automatically routes the user’s incoming calls to another number. The process may involve use of a virtual phone number. In a find me / follow me service, call forwarding may allow calls to be routed to the user at any location or to route calls through a number of different phone numbers or other applications, such as voice e-mail or text messaging.”

Offering 24/7 customer service makes a good impression on prospective clients. Not every businesses has the technology to offer this service, however. In addition, businesses are hesitant to hand out personal phone numbers as it compromises their professional reputation.

VoIP phone services solve this problem relatively easily. Businesses can simply redirect their phone calls and assign responsibilities to different employees. Certain businesses have to go above and beyond regular “business hours,” and this feature allows them to do just that.

At 4 Corner IT, we offer VoIP phone services that come with this added feature. In addition, we can assist you in setting up call forwarding to make your business’ customer support team more flexible.

If you would like more information about VoIP phone services, contact us.

How Does VoIP Relate to Disaster Recovery?

how does voip relate to disaster recovery

If you’ve never considered a cloud-based VoIP phone service, you’re missing out on advantages you probably never thought about before. Using on-premise phone systems might be something you’ve used for so long that you’ve become accustomed to the headaches they can cause.

But you shouldn’t be afraid of switching to a cloud-based VoIP system thanks to ease of setup and use. Because everything is internal, you’ll be saving yourself plenty of office space. You’ll also save money and time in various ways.

No More Focus on Phone Equipment and Maintenance

You may have years of bad memories taking care of your on-site phone systems when things went wrong. Likely, you can add the budget element and the wasting of time taking care of equipment that isn’t the focus of your business.

With a cloud-based VoIP system, everything is online and maintained by your provider so you don’t have to worry about taking care of a problem. This allows you to focus valuable time on your business and not on fixing technology that should already work efficiently.

The same applies to upgrades when you need them. You can eliminate the panic of needing to spend extra money to upgrade hardware.

The Mobility Factor

Thanks to being in the cloud, you can make your business as mobile as you want. Anywhere there’s an Internet connection, you can tap into your VoIP system and use it as your business phone line.

Being mobile is an essential part of business today when the need to travel is frequently necessary. At one time, routing calls from analog phones was very complicated if not impossible. Now you can be at a business meeting anywhere and be able to read messages and take or make phone calls in an instant.

This helps connect to another aspect many people don’t consider with cloud-based VoIP technology.

So How Does this Relate to Disaster Recovery?

The cloud has become a real game-changer in the realm of disaster recovery thanks to the capability of business data being stored there. What happens, though, when your physical business becomes destroyed during a natural disaster? Imagine your on-site phone systems being wiped out and being unable to make calls to customers to keep continuity going.

With cloud-based VoIP, your phone system is already online and ready to use immediately to help get back on your feet. As long as you have a recovery center somewhere and Internet service for business continuity, your phone system is there and ready to use.

Far too many customers have abandoned businesses during disasters due to business lines going down. You no longer have to worry about the dreaded fast busy signal.

After all, customers calling from other states won’t always understand why your lines are down and expect your phones to still be workable. Now you can prove to them that you thought things out technologically to help place them first.

Consider us here at 4 Corner IT for your cloud-based VoIP. We’re an established IT team with 14 years of experience in making sure the technology we offer is truly right for every business.

Contact us so we can analyze your business structure to see if cloud-based VoIP is the right choice for you.

Protect Yourself from Eavesdropping on VoIP Phone Systems

protect yourself from eavesdropping on voip phone systems

VoIP phones are becoming increasingly popular among business owners due to their low cost and flexibility. You should know that no phone system is entirely secured right out of the box, but there are steps you can take to keep your business from being at risk.

4 Corner IT can implement these steps for you when you sign up for VoIP phone services. Here are some ways you can increase the security of VoIP services easily and inexpensively:

1. Maintain Separate Networks

Maintaining separate networks for your data and VoIP services will expose the network to fewer threats because there is a smaller attack surface as a result. Your networks do not have to be separated physically, as using technology to create a “logical separation” will also suffice.

2. Take Advantage of Encryption with VoIP Phone Services

Being able to intercept VoIP phone calls won’t benefit a hacker if he or she is unable to decipher them as a result. Encryption won’t prevent calls from being captured, but could nonetheless deter hackers since they would be unable to understand them.

3. Use Firewalls to Keep People Out

This should go without saying, but you need a firewall that is especially secure whenever you are using VoIP communications in order to prevent people from being able to intercept your phone calls in the first place.

4. Authenticate Users on the Network

This will ensure that unauthorized users are unable to use your network, which in turn will reduce the odds of an interception.

5. Avoid Talking on Wireless Networks with VoIP Phone Services

Your risk of outside interference increases whenever you use VoIP in conjunction with a wireless network. As such, you should caution employees who are frequently away from the office as to the dangers of using VoIP to communicate via a laptop.

These are a few things you can do to ensure privacy while using VoIP services. To find out more about how VoIP services can benefit your business, contact us.

What is the Best Ad Sense Banner Size?

what is the best ad sense banner size

Using Google Ad Sense on your website can be a great way to generate extra revenue. 

It’s easy to set up an Ad Sense account with Google, and once you place the ads on your blog or web page, you don’t need to do anything outside the usual.  Continue to optimize your website and fill it with substantive content; your traffic will increase, and ideally, more people will click on the ads, increasing your earnings.

While the basic process of setting up ads on your site is straightforward, you have to make some considerations about what they’ll look like.  For this post, let’s focus on one dimension: size. 

What are the most popular Adsense banner sizes?

What sizes would be most effective for you?

Here are some points to consider:

  • According to Google, wider ads tend to do better than taller ones.  This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but a tendency based on the fact that readers generally have an easier time scanning a wider ad and taking in its meaning at a glance.
  • Among the ads Google names as effective, there’s the ‘medium rectangle’ (300 x 250), ‘large rectangle’ (336 x 280), and the ‘leaderboard’ (728 x 90); they also mention the ‘wide skyscraper,’ which is a tall ad (160 x 600) but has more width than the regular skyscraper (120 x 600) and also appears to outperform it.
  • In general, bigger ads will get more clicks, because of their greater visibility to readers.  However, a huge ad isn’t always feasible given the layout of your blog, and it may not be desirable depending on the tone you want to set with your site.  Relatively small square ads are often selected by site owners who may want to fill in small areas of space on their page or who want their ads to be unobtrusive.  Sometimes they do look good at that size, but keep in mind that they may not give you much revenue.  If you’re determined to use these smaller ads, you’ll need to try and place them in a position where they’re most visible, so that you can get the most out of them.
  • Although the horizontal banner-type ads (e.g. the 728 x 90 ‘leaderboard’ and the 468 x 60 ‘full banner’) are popular, they sometimes blend in too well with the site, looking like a page header or another site fixture that readers won’t click.  In general, while size plays a role, take care with where you place your ads and how well they stand out.  You don’t want them to be so jarring that they distract from the site’s content, but neither do you want them to be unnoticeable.
  • Take care not to clutter your page too much.  For instance, layering your sidebar with many small ads may make your site look spammy.

Ultimately, the ad sizes that look best will be the ones that suit the layout of your site.  But keep in mind that some ads do perform better, on average, than others; be mindful of this when you choose the size and shape of the ad and its position on the page.

Citrix Partner Service Provider South Florida

citrix partner service provider miami fort lauderdale and all south florida
Citrix Solutions in Miami and South Florida

9 Things You Should Know About using a Citrix Partner:

  1. 71% of small businesses need Citrix for mobile workstyles.
  2. The migration is fast and affordable and there is really no learning curve since Citrix brings you the applications you’ve come to know and love and use on an everyday basis to all your devices, be it smart phone, laptop, tablet, or desktop PC.
  3. 4 Corner IT can help you adopt these cloud services with a one vendor, one solution approach where everything you need from email and word processing to billing and CRM is provided in one easy to use desktop software.
  4. When it comes to cloud computing, Citrix is the #1 proven solution by over 1,500 partners. It is based on the same technology used by 99% of Fortune 500 companies.
  5. 4 Corner IT delivers those same services and benefits to small and medium size businesses at SMB prices.
  6. Citrix delivers apps and desktops to over 1. 5 billion devices around the world.
  7. 50% of small businesses think a Citrix partner solution is important to their business.
  8. As a SMB, you probably want to be mobile and have the flexibility to work wherever you want, on whichever device you want, but may lack the resources to do so. Citrix can do this and more at SMB prices.
  9. Call or message 4 Corner IT today. We’ll schedule a live demo to show you how you can get all this and more with Citrix. (954) 474-2204