Voice Mail
If you don’t need an 800-number just yet, and your customers don’t mind paying a regular long-distance charge to leave you a voice message, then SimpleVoiceBox is for you. You won’t have to advertise your personal or cell phone number on the internet and you are advised by email as soon as a message has been left for you. You (or your VA) can retrieve these messages via phone or computer instantly. You also receive an email recap at the end of the day listing all of the callers including their phones numbers.
I have found this to be a most user-friendly service. It takes minutes to set up and because I am not a techno-wizard by any stretch, I’m constantly looking for the easiest and simplest solution.
You can record your greeting and even encourage folks to visit your website (and perhaps your “Contact Us” form if you like). But just giving customers the option to hear your voice and leave their voice message adds a nice personal touch. Some people are better at explaining themselves verbally rather than in written form. Most of them don’t seem to mind that they are paying for a one-minute call.
The SimpleVoiceBox website is: http://www.simplevoicebox.com/
It’s a really handy tool. I use it every day.
Google Calendar
What a fantastic free resource! If you don’t have Outlook or a similar calendar feature, this works amazingly well, especially for sharing. As a virtual assistant who manages the busy schedules of several clients, I can’t say enough good things about this program.
What I normally recommend is that your virtual assistant set up the original calendar under their own Google login so that they become the primary owner. This means that all reminders of your upcoming appointments come directly to them. After all, the job of your virtual assistant is to manage your schedule.
You can add any appointments you like and your virtual assistant will see them instantly before they schedule any other appointments for you.
I have several Google identities, so the calendar I see for one client while logged in under his/her umbrella is not the same one I see when logged under someone else’s.
This is a really cool resource that I highly recommend for folks who are just starting out and need someone to manage their schedule.
For more information about Google Calendars, you can visit:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlecalendar/overview.html
Google Documents
I track a lot of information for my clients. This includes everything from tracking shipments to tracking article submissions or just about anything else you could think of. Again, this is a free service from Google where you can share Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc.
The only reservation (or perhaps caution I have with this) is that I still maintain an actual record of this information on my local hard drive. While Google has never let me down, I still maintain a mirror image of this information within my Microsoft Office programs. It only takes a minute.
Sharing a spreadsheet or document via Google Documents avoids the need to email them back and forth to your assistant on a regular basis. If you need up-to-the-minute information, it will be there for you in real time.
For more information about Google Documents, check out:
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html
The above are three tools that I have used extensively (for free) and have never encountered a problem with. I believe they can help get one’s business off the ground where money is an issue, as it often is when just starting out.
I have a few more suggestions for free resources, but will save those for next time!
