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Business Use of Virtual Number

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Business Use of Virtual NumberIf you are running your business for some time, you have probably heard about virtual numbers and IP telephony. However, you still do not understand what these concepts are and why they are necessary. Our article will help you to figure out what virtual numbers are and point out the benefits of virtual telephony for business purposes. For more information, visit telnum.net/services/toll-free-numbers/.

What Is a Virtual Number, and How Does It Work?

A virtual number, or online phone, is a service provided by various telephone providers. To put it simply, it is an ordinary phone that uses many channels for voice communication.

How Does It Operate?

In IP telephony, data transmission goes exclusively through the Internet, but there are also cases when you can use virtual numbers without the Internet if you set up forwarding from online to fixed and mobile devices.

Basic principles of virtual phone numbers:

  1. An incoming or outgoing call goes to the provider, which carries IP telephony services.
  2. Then, the call is processed, and in seconds, it is redirected to the main server of the virtual station.
  3. After processing, the call goes to a virtual number in the case of an incoming call. If it is an outgoing call, you just get to the recipient for voice communication.

Advantages of a Virtual Phone Number

A virtual phone number has many advantages, but we want to highlight the main ones:

  • When your business moves, you don’t have to worry about transferring all communications.
  • IP telephony combines all your company’s existing numbers into one and distributes the load to your employees, depending on the scenarios you set.
  • It guarantees convenient, fast, and reliable communication between employees within the organization.
  • Such numbers are fully customizable. You can set voice greetings and menus.
  • You can record and listen to conversations, analyze call statistics, and much more.

Since virtual numbers are fully customizable, depending on your preferences, the phone call can be routed to any desired device. The priority may depend on various factors: the call may go to the first available manager or the one who received fewer calls.

A Management Guide To Better Written Communication In Business

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article | A Management Guide To Better Written Communication In BusinessThere is an old saying which goes, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and therein lies a very powerful message for modern business management.

Written in 1839 by an English author, the sentiment expressed that the written word was a far more effective communication tool than a weapon.

Written over two hundred years ago, it is a lesson that still holds good today, and it would benefit the canny business manager to spend a few moments to ponder its significance.

A low literacy crisis

A study by the US Department of Education in 2020 found that 54% of the adult population of the USA – that is, 130 million people between ages 16 and 74 – lacked proficiency in writing and were graded as reading below a sixth-grade level. When viewed in this light, the question is just how this low literacy level impacts business and the overall economy.

This rightly raises several questions and can be viewed from both the perspective of the employer and employee alike.

Do workers with lower literacy levels in positions involving a high degree of written work output and/or a requirement for high levels of reading and comprehension cope adequately, or do they become unduly overwhelmed or dissatisfied?

Email and written communication

Email is likely to be the second most widely used communication tool after the telephone system for most business concerns. For many organizations, email is likely to be the first contact a potential new client will have with the company.

Based on the quality of outgoing emails, how exactly is the business being perceived by clients and potential new customers? A poor first impression can make or break a business relationship.

Consider providing staff with a deeper understanding of the importance of good communication skills. Ensure personnel makes avail of support applications like ‘Spell Check” or a communications editor like Grammarly. An explanation of how to use grammarly can be found here. For employees involved in the preparation of business letters, contracts, or reports, serious consideration should be given to the implementation of such support applications across the organization.

Social media – the new communication mode

In addition to lower literacy levels, professional organizations also face the intrusion of modern communication culture into the workplace. The mass uptake of social media accounts and communications apps has given rise to the popular use of abbreviations and emoticons, which have steadily found their way into more formal business communications.

Whilst their usage can be deemed acceptable in friendly, informal emails or written communications, the manager should maintain a healthy awareness of general business communication standards.

Deeper staff training and awareness

Given the importance of good business communication skills, management can further assist and equip their staff by providing a deeper level of guidance and training.

Consider providing a guideline to applicable staff members outlining best corporate practices with regards to written and email structure and presentation. The use of support applications to assist staff in meeting these guidelines can be recommended within these documents.

Remember that communication is always a two-way street – assisting staff by providing a support structure can not only assist in raising the bar with client perception, but it can also potentially contribute to improved levels of employee satisfaction.

How to Make Your Emails More Professional

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article | How to Make Your Emails More ProfessionalRegardless of who you’re conversing with and who you’re having an email exchange with, it’s important you conduct yourself in a professional manner when using email. Making your emails professional looking will help you attract clients and keep existing ones and will also help your communication be far clearer and easier to understand when conveying information between team members.

There are many things you can do to keep your emails looking professional. Here are a few ways to do just that.

Use an Email Signature

An email signature is a great way to sign off on an email and make it appear organized, professional, and important. To make a great email signature, you can either create one yourself, or use many of the wonderful templates available on this email signature software for Office 365. A good signature should provide all the information an email recipient will need to contact you and connect and may include a name, job title, office number and business address.

Signatures can also be a good way to display a bit of personality and to display your brand in a better way. You can do this by making use of awesome themes, color schemes and fonts that convey your business or your own personal brand.

Avoid Grammar and Spelling Mistakes

There’s not many more worse email offenses than having spelling and grammar issues within the body of your message. This gives off the impression that you’re not professional and that you haven’t put enough effort into your correspondence to make sure everything is in order. A simple typo can easily be offensive and could make whoever you’re emailing with view you in a worse off light.

With tools such as Grammarly, making sure your emails are spelled correctly and formatted well is simple, as the application will scan through your email as you type it, highlighting potential issues. The premium version can also help you write to fit a certain tone of voice, which can be helpful when you’re dealing with different clients and people of different seniority.

Keep Things Short and Sweet

A professional email is one that gets straight to the details and isn’t overstuffed with pointless sentences and phrases. This is because saying the bare minimum will help to avoid misunderstandings as it keeps the content and the instructions within the email clear.

Of course, you’re allowed and are encouraged to ask how people are and be friendly, and it’s critical that you include all the relevant information, but you shouldn’t be writing essays for your emails. In addition, it’s also a good idea to have a line break between each paragraph, to make it even easier to digest.

Make Sure Your Email Address Is Suitable

If you’re using an email address that you created back in your early teens, then it might be worth evaluating it and making sure that it gives off a professional vibe. Too many working adults are using addresses like ‘[email protected]’ and it’s sending off a bad and childish impression. To ensure that you’re professional, change the email to simply your name.

3 Types Of Listening Skills That You Can Adopt For Your Next Conversation

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article | 3 Types Of Listening Skills That You Can Adopt For Your Next ConversationHave you ever been a part of a conversation where the other person constantly shuts you out? And they just won’t let you speak! Don’t worry; you’re not the only one. We all have had to go through people dominating conversations through combative listening. It’s not a pretty picture!

But what are your options? What is the best way to react? Should you be competitive too? Probably not. An active listener would be more likely to grasp what the person is saying and defend his point of view. Makes sense, no? Although it is difficult to apply in heated debates, with a little bit of practice, you’ll know what type of listener you need to be and in which situation. Here are a few that you may already be practicing but didn’t know about! Keep reading.

#1 Competitive Listening – The One Who Shuts Someone Down

Don’t you hate how your boss interrupts conversations to emphasize his point of view? Well, it’s a type of listening skill. Instead of listening to the other person, this model involves pushing your opinion onto someone else. Whether arguing with your spouse or friend, you may have realized that you have been doing this as well. Sometimes, we jump in to say what our opinion is and make a point. This type of listening is predominant when someone wants to list the flaws or drawbacks of the other person’s argument.

One can but not necessarily should apply this to have the upper hand during a negotiation. You may have realized that when you are being a competitive listener, you may indulge yourself a little too much and have a closed mind about everything else. Which isn’t ideal – especially during conversations with important people.

#2 Reflective Listening – The One Who Is An Active Participant

The best kind of conversations are those when someone is actively listening and responding to you. This is known as active listening since a huge part of it includes listening to the other person’s side of the story. It’s necessary to be patient and reflective since hearing alone does not do the job.

Remember when your spouse told you that they would be late for dinner tonight? But you were glued to the television! You may have heard it, but did you listen? If you listened, you would have responded and asked questions or given an opinion. So, it’s necessary for both people to be interested and intrigued while this takes place. Interactive conversations can lead to discoveries about oneself and the people around you. Any conversation can become an intense one. Like an adventure ride. So push beyond your comfort zone and activate your ear lobes. This conversation is going to be a thrilling one!

#3 Passive Listening – One-Sided Conversations

Some people simply like to listen. They are attentive listeners and are absorbing all the information they get with every passing minute. However, this can get monotonous for the other person if it’s a long conversation. Although ideal when you want to pay attention to someone, you may use this while someone is giving a lecture, a talk, or narrating their experiences.

Rather than being reflective, you would want to listen with utmost curiosity and be 100 percent engrossed in the smooth-flowing conversation.

Here, unlike when you’re actively listening, even if you agree with the other individual, you’re not doing so vocally. This can be a good practice to understand what someone is saying, instead of trying to put your point across.

Conclusion

There you go, those were the three different types of listening skills that you probably didn’t know about. We all use these at different points in our conversations throughout the day. Sometimes you can be an active listener with your friend but a passive listener with your boss and a competitive listener with your partner!

How Transparency Can Benefit Your Organization

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article | How Transparency Can Benefit Your OrganizationTransparency in communication has become more common in all sorts of enterprises. In the nonprofit and responsible profit sector, candor and authenticity are considered high value. Customer loyalty tends to increase when there’s an emphasis on transparency. Leveraging the power of a good story, transparency is a positive alternative to a competitive, secretive attitude; it’s a more compassionate way to function. For stakeholders, trust is a major issue; transparency helps facilitate it. Consider several ways that transparency can benefit your organization.

Relationships With Investors

If you’re building a relationship with a possible investor, increasing the trust level can be facilitated with the wise use of transparency. There’s a good bit of competition for funding, and investors want to recoup their money as soon as possible. It may be daunting to decide how you want to present your brand story; the assistance of professionals such as PR firms in Portland Oregon can get you started in the right direction. Judicious transparency indicates that you’ll be honest and thorough with your business plan and consistently keep investors in the loop.

Community Trust

In this case, your “community” is everyone you come into contact with — it’s not only a geographical designation. Transparency is all about awareness of the social norms of your customers and stakeholders while having sincere communication content and style. While it’s important to have a reputation for honesty and integrity as sort of a baseline, portraying an image of absolute perfection is unsustainable, unrealistic, and may backfire. Keep it real by being straightforward about the bumps along the way, and describing how you’re overcoming them.

Employee Morale

As you build your organization, transparency with employees is a valuable investment, especially in the early stages. Higher productivity, more confidence and creativity, and less turnover are associated with greater transparency. You’ll also build your word-of-mouth reputation in the professional community.

Customer Relations

Customer confidence starts from a foundation of trust, and transparency helps build it — particularly if you’re a human service provider. Firms like a healthcare PR company Portland can help you craft your message so it resonates with customers. Your organization gains credibility if customers see moments of vulnerability within a framework of integrity and commitment.

Depending on your type of organization, there are many ways to be transparent and professional. Take a look at similar businesses and see how they’re effectively weaving transparency into their stories, and mine your own experiences to craft a compelling message.