Archives: August 2010

Ruby Gems: Virtual Receptionist Scheduler Brianna Popson Celebrates 1 Year at Ruby!

By | 08.06.2010 |

Virtual Receptionist Scheduler Brianna PopsonOur Scheduler Brianna Popson is celebrating her one year anniversary at Ruby, and boy, are we glad she’s here! A self-described “scheduling ninja” (a more accurate descriptor of what she does by far), Brianna makes sure that sick Rubys have time to rest, vacationing Rubys have time to relax, and our remaining virtual receptionists as well as our clients have fantastic days all around.  Sounds like a big job, but you’d never know it; she’s always got a big smile and a witty quip at the ready.  Here’s a little more about Bri!

What’s your favorite part about working at Ruby?

I love working with such a great group of people. There are so many lovely ladies (and Keith!) at this office. You can find so many different talents, interests, and points of view here, it makes for a lot of fun every day! It’s a great environment, and there’s a real sense of camaraderie.

What’s your favorite part about living in Portland?

I love the variety of independent businesses you can find here. You’re never far from a great coffee shop or brewery. You can find fantastic local foods, independent clothing shops, farmers’ markets — everything! If you want a vintage, organic cotton, hot pink jumpsuit with orange sequins, there’s probably a shop for that too.  I love it!

What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not at Ruby?

I enjoy reading as much as I can when I get some time to just relax. When the weather’s right, I go to Sauvie Island with friends and get some much needed Vitamin D. And when the weather’s not so nice (as occasionally happens in Oregon), I like to catch up on my favorite TV shows with a big bowl of popcorn or hit up the Pub Quiz at a local bar by my apartment.

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4 Fun, Free Tech Tools for Small Businesses

By | 08.05.2010 |

Photo by zulfinho

We recently had the opportunity to recommend our favorite free teleconferencing service (www.FreeConference.com) on the Ruby Twitter page, and it made us realize that there are a few other fantastic – and free – web-based services we use on a regular basis that we ought to share as well. These tools serve a variety of needs and are especially handy for small businesses. Here are a few we’ve used and can recommend.

www.FreeConference.com – As the name implies, it allows for free, multi-person conference calls. It provides all of the “fancy” conferencing features like entrance and exit tones, ability to have one person speak while others only listen (perfect for presentations) or a typical free-for-all, and freedom to talk as long as you’d like. The callers each dial a regular long-distance number, and if you use their paid service, you can have callers use a toll-free dial-in number. Best part? The sound quality is just as good as with ordinary telephone answering!

www.SurveyMonkey.com – Want to do a survey? Measure employee or customer satisfaction? Get feedback on an idea? SurveyMonkey’s basic plan is FREE. You can survey up to 100 people and ask them up to 10 questions. It’s a snap to do, and they even have 15 pre-built visual themes to make your survey look good! If you want to conduct longer or more complex surveys, survey more than 100 people, or have the capability to play with your results more, you can pay for one of the fancier plans, each under $20/month.

www.MeetingWizard.com – Trying to schedule something with people who don’t share your Microsoft Exchange server? MeetingWizard is magic! You propose dates and times for your event, and email it out to your would-be participants. Each person can then indicate which dates/times work and which don’t. You can then look at a spiffy chart, showing which date/time works best for your group and easily email a confirmation to everyone. It’s great for meetings, and even for social gatherings. It sure helps with the cat-herding!

www.Hootsuite.com – To quote the site itself, it’s a “Social Media Dashboard.” It allows you to easily update multiple social networks at once (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), track your results (click-throughs) and mentions, schedule your tweets and Facebook updates in advance, and much more. Its customizable interface keeps all of your social media organized so you don’t have to waste time hopping from one platform to the next. Another fun fact: the White House uses Hootsuite; who knew?

What’s your favorite free business service? Do you know of one not listed here? We’d love to hear about your experiences! Post your feedback in the comments below!

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Receptionist Tip: Confirming Information Puts Callers at Ease

By | 08.03.2010 |
Good in-house or vitual receptionists alike will confirm information to build trust with callers

Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives

For the fist time in years, I recently updated my billing information with a couple of services over the phone. I am used to managing my bills online, so speaking with live receptionists was a nice change.  Every receptionist I talked to was friendly, upbeat, and helpful.  The Internet is fantastic, but an online update definitely doesn’t boost my mood like a pleasant conversation does.  One thing surprised me, though: The receptionists I spoke with didn’t repeat my name, address, or credit card information back to me automatically.  When I asked them to repeat it, they did happily, and each of these pro receptionists had gathered my information correctly.   

Now, I am probably pickier than most customers.  I learned a lot during my years of working as a virtual receptionist at Ruby, and I’ll admit that our standards are pretty high.  If you’re fielding calls, my advice is to confirm the spelling of names and tricky words, and always read back numbers — telephone numbers, addresses, etc. — when gathering information from callers.  (Try using words to confirm letters, and reading from your notes to confirm that you’ve gathered the caller’s information correctly.)  If your callers are anything like me, they’ll appreciate it if you confirm their information, and they’ll notice if you don’t.

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