Happy New Year! A friendly reminder that our virtual receptionist service will be closed on Tuesday, January 1st to ring in the new year. During this time, calls will be answered according to your after-hours call handling. We’ll be back answering calls live at 5:00am Pacific Time on Wednesday, January 2nd!
Cheers to your success in 2013!
Your virtual receptionist team wishes you all the best this holiday season!
Just a friendly reminder, Ruby will close at 3:00pm Pacific Time (6:00pm Eastern) on Monday, December 24th and will be closed all of Tuesday, December 25th for the Christmas holiday. During this time, calls will be answered according to your after-hours instructions.
We’ll be back bright and early answering your calls live at 5:00am Pacific on Wednesday, December 26th. If you’re taking additional days off, feel welcome to update your Whereabouts on your free Ruby iPhone app or mobile-friendly Member Services Area. We’ll let callers know so that you can relax and enjoy your vacation!
2012 has been quite a year for Ruby: We earned a Lighthouse Award for our 5-year rapid growth, launched the “Five at Five” paid sabbatical program, and designed new employee happiness initiatives. Our CEO Jill Nelson was recognized for her commitment to customer-centricity and had the pleasure of sharing our culture with other businesses across the nation. Of the many amazing happenings this year, we’re definitely most proud of being named the #1 Best Small Workplace in the U.S.!
Last Saturday, we took a moment to thank our team for all their hard work and celebrate a truly momentous year with a 1920s-themed bash! It was a wonderful night, filled with laughter, good friends, dancing, and all that jazz. Feel free to check out the Ruby Facebook page for more photos from the event!
Special thanks to the Melody Ballroom, Portland Photobooth, and The Stolen Sweets for the swell tunes!
Happy Thanksgiving! We’re extremely grateful to be able to work with such amazing people; you truly make our virtual receptionist service a wonderful place to work!
Just a friendly reminder, Ruby will be closed tomorrow, November 22nd, in honor of the holiday, and our Client Services department will be closed on Friday the 23rd. However, our virtual receptionist team will be here on Friday, cheerfully answering your calls live starting at 5:00am Pacific Time!
If your office is closed on Friday, or you have any special whereabouts instructions, please feel welcome to call us at 866-611-7829 and let us know. We’ll gladly set great expectations for your callers so that you can have a stress-free holiday weekend!
Wishing you the very best,
The Ruby Team
Volunteering at the Oregon Food Bank has become one of our favorite Ruby traditions. For the past five years, Rubys have gathered around Thanksgiving to package food for families in need, and last night, almost half of our virtual receptionists and staff chose to spend their evening giving back to our local community!
Even before our arrival, the team was busy collecting donations for our food drive. We were able to pack our IT Director Keith’s truck full of nonperishable goods and ended up donating roughly 600 pounds of food this year thanks to the generosity of our team! After we dropped off the donations, we all suited up in hairnets and aprons and got to work packaging red beans. In just a few short, dance-party-filled hours, we were able to put together over 7,000 meals for needy families in our community!
The Oregon Food Bank is a cause close to our hearts, and we are thankful for all they do to fight hunger! To learn more about OFB, set up a time to volunteer, or discover other ways to give visit the OFB website here. If you live outside of Oregon, Feeding America has a Food Bank Locator to find a local food bank in your area!
Ruby’s in three places at once today! Our friendly virtual receptionist team is holding down the fort here in Portland, Oregon, but our Founder & CEO Jill Nelson and General Manager Diana Stepleton are in Orlando, Florida, for MILOfest. On Saturday, Jill is delighted to be presenting on how using processes, checklists & systems can foster error-proof customer service. We’re excited to see some of our clients in person and meet new folks!
Ashley and Lauren at Booth 317 at the Small Business Expo
Sales Associates Ashley Fisher and Lauren O’Neill also made their way down to Los Angeles for the Small Business Expo at the California Market Center. It’s free to attend, so if you’re in the area, feel free to stop by and say hello at Booth 317!
For our third year in a row, our virtual receptionists lent our phone answering skills to the annual Oregon Humane Society Telethon and cheerfully took donations as part of the phone bank. For the past two years, Rubys have organized volunteers to answer phones, but this year, we stepped it up a notch and Ruby became an official sponsor!
The telethon was a fantastic success, raising a total of $361,725 for animals in need! 68 pets were also adopted during the event – including a sweet little guniea pig by virtual receptionist Kimberly C.!
Ashley, Stephanie, Sarah (and Ellie the dog), and Katie representing Ruby on the phone bank
The Oregon Humane Society is a cause close to our hearts — so much so that this year, we’ve decided to focus on supporting OHS along with Dress for Success and the Oregon Food Bank as Ruby’s three official philanthropies. We can’t wait to do more for this wonderful organization and give back to our community!
You know you’re a Ruby when…you need more than one blog post to share all of the wonderful characteristics that make a Ruby!
You know you’re a Ruby when…
…you have a nice-off competition. The Ruby IT Department treated the rest of the staff to an Edible Arrangement, so virtual receptionists Erin and Sara-Lee repaid them with a TARDIS full of cookies and declared a “Nice War!”
…you’re having a bad day and think to yourself, “It’ll be OK once I get to work!” — Mercedes Salles, Executive Assistant
…you notice that someone looks lost and walk them to the nearest streetcar stop (turns out she was visiting Portland from Georgia!). — Whitney L., virtual receptionist
…you no longer end sentences with prepositions and have sparkling grammar. — Ashley Hampton, Director of Client Services
…you always say “Please” and “Thank you!” — Lauren O’Neill, Sales Associate
…you ask questions like, “Whose bag of pink feathers is this?” and “Who knows how to draw rainbows really well?” and you get real answers! — Claire LaRocca, Office Champion
…you miss Ruby on the weekends. — Rachel Ross, Billing Specialist
or, as Problem Solver & Happiness Maker Kate Carroll put it:
Virtual receptionist Katy M. spoke with a caller recently who was interested in finding out more about a TV show: “I caught the tail end of this show while staying at a hotel. It was about a renegade doctor who walks with a cane….”
The business she called was a media company, but they had nothing to do with this particular television show. All in all, a pretty classic case of a wrong number.
A grumpy doctor with a cane…? Rather than leave the caller hanging, Katy let her know, “Unfortunately, you have the wrong number, but I’ve seen that show! It’s called House, M.D.”
The caller was impressed and extremely grateful — even when calling the wrong number, she was treated kindly and got her answer!
After the call ended, Katy sent an FYI message to the client to share the tale. Not only was the client delighted, she was a devoted House fan herself!
In 30 seconds, and Katy was able to WOW a caller and a client and make two new connections — all from a wrong number! House may be a genius diagnostician, but Katy has him beat in creating connections!
Virtual receptionists Whitney L. and Stephanie S.
Today’s post comes to us via Stephanie S., a virtual receptionist Team Captain at Ruby.
Last year, fellow virtual receptionist Whitney L. organized a Ruby Book Club when she discovered that many Rubys share a passion for reading. It’s a great way to Create Community while engaging in a hobby we already enjoy. Each month, we vote on a new book to read and a few of us meet up to chat about it after Ruby closes for the night. At our last meeting, we discussed our latest book selection: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Written in the 1950s, Bradbury’s book depicts a dystopian society that has witnessed drastic changes in technology and culture. He describes small devices that rest in a person’s ear and transmit voices and television screens the size of an entire wall. Books are outlawed and former classics have been whittled down to just a few sentences. The book’s main character begins to realize that with all of this technology and simplification, meaningful connections with other people have become obsolete. He does not have significant conversations with his co-workers. His wife refers to the characters on her television programs as her family, since she feels closer to them than she does to her husband and actual family members.
It didn’t take much discussion at our book club meeting before Ruby made her way into our conversation! We marveled at how closely parts of Bradbury’s vision parallel our current society, with the giant screens, tiny phones, and information being condensed down to quickly readable bytes. While parts of the story were far-fetched, we do now live in a society where human interactions are increasingly shorter and less personal. Ruby’s mission is to ensure that these interactions are preserved and even strengthened. Each call at Ruby is an opportunity to make a connection, and hopefully, by spreading a little Ruby cheer into the world every day, we can ensure that cultivating personal connections stays alive and well in this increasingly virtual world!