Archived Coverage
Virtual Attendant: Big Features. Small Price.
Ramon Ray
March 16, 2005
Network World, 10/24/05
One of the very nice things about working in a small business is that the bureaucratic layers are broken, there's just you and a few other guys and gals. If you are working in remote offices (home offices) you don't have to go to a corporate building everyday. There is one major disadvantage, however. When people call your company - where do they call? Do they call you? Do they call Sally? Do they call Joann? Do they call Kumar?
As your business grows in services you might assign dedicated staff to take on "sales", handle account payables/receivables, and etc. In this scenario it can be unprofessional if customers and prospects can't call one number, like they would your larger competition, and be connected to the right "department".
Into
this void steps Gotvmail a
Boston based company that makes managing incoming telephone
calls of a distributed staff quite easy and low cost.
A competing service to Gotvmail is
offered by
VirtualPBX which offers features that larger businesses
might need such as ACD queuing and pbx backup.
Using Gotvmail you don't have to work with your local telephone
company to set up a hardwired telephone system, that you might
outgrow or need changed later on. Gotvmail provides you with a
toll free or local telephone number, a custom greeting ("Thanks
for calling My Company, please dial 1 for sales, etc"), multiple
mail boxes and dial by name, live call forwarding (if someone
reaches you, you can forward them to another number), music on
hold, and web/email delivery of voice mail.
To save money on outbound phone calls, you won't throw away your telephone company. In fact you can still consider using one of the new voice over IP telephony providers. But to handle your incoming call and project a professional image, Gotvmail is an ideal solution.
Service starts at $9.95 per month for 5 "lines", $19.95 /month for 10 "lines", and $39.95 per month for 20 mail boxes. The higher end services included additional features such as fax, web & email delivery, and 1,000 local minutes free.
When callers call into your toll free number you will pay a per minute fee of from 4.8 - 7.4 cents per minute.
