5 Ways a Virtual Number can Boost your Productivity
We all have so much to do these days. Check email, listen to Voicemail, reply to text messages — plus we’re supposed to get actual work done!
One way to stay productive amongst all the chaos is to use Tossable Digits Virtual Numbers. A way to organize and manage the people who call and send us SMS messages.
Here are 5 Ways a Virtual Number can Boost your Productivity.
1. Know Why Someone Is Calling Before You Answer.
We use a lot of service vendors to help us get our jobs done — hosted CRM, Email Management, Phone Carriers, etc. Sometimes they are important, but usually they are sales calls or something else.
Because I know I’ve given out only a specific Virtual Phone Number to each of our vendors, when my phone rings, I can glance down and see if I can take that call or not. I don’t even need to know what phone number the vendor might be calling from.
2. Record Your Phone Calls for Later Review.
Just the other day I spoke to someone who said I promised them something in a phone call the previous day. I really couldn’t remember, and it didn’t seem likely, but possible. Luckily I had automatically recorded the call. I was able to listen to the call again, and it turned out to be a reasonable misunderstanding.
In the end, I was able to quickly resolve a disagreement, and relaying the conversation back jogged their memory too and both of us were satisfied! It’s so handy to have that record, since our minds can truly mess with us.
If you want to learn more about all of the memory biases we can suffer from unknowingly and how to overcome them and be more productive, check out this recent post from Intuit on the Psychology of Success.
3. Send Voicemails to your Email.
Who has time to remember your PIN and call your Voicemail System? How many times have you gotten an email letting you know your Voicemail box is full? Cut all of that out with a Virtual Number. You get UNLIMITED Voicemail storage, so you’ll never miss a Voicemail.
And since most people use their email inbox as their action list, we can send Voicemails as attachments – right to your inbox. Where you can quickly listen and take action without leaving the comfort of your keyboard. Great for people using the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology.
4. Route Calls to Different People Based on the Caller
On my Vendor Virtual Number, I have a few call rules set up. Some of our financial vendors, such as the credit card gateway and merchant account, are handled by the CFO.
We’ve noted that they call from the same block of phone numbers, so I set up a Call Rule that sends the call directly to the CFO instead of me, since they handle that relationship. It means that I’m only interrupted when the call is for a vendor relationship I handle.
It also means that if they call from a different number, someone responsible can still get the call, and I’ll just add a new Call Rule later. Call Rules are a fantastic way to avoid interruptions and get the incoming calls to the right people, even without the caller knowing about it.
5. Stop those Annoying “Out of Office” Emails
Let’s say you are an Account Manager, and you manage about 100 clients. But you’re going on Vacation for a week. You could spend time setting up an email responder, calling your clients to let them know that they should call Susan instead of you next week. But why inconvenience your customers?
With a Virtual Number, you just change the forwarding number to Susan’s phone for the week you’re on vacation, adding a few “exceptions” in the Call Rules for work-related calls you still are willing to take. Then when you get back, switch everything back and your clients are still happy and healthy!
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These are just a few examples about how we “eat our own dogfood” to make us more productive.
If you have some other ideas, let us know in our LiveChat or via email. We’d love to hear how YOU use Tossable Digits to increase productivity!
