Phone Service:
Since I work primarily from two physical offices (one on North Padre Island, Texas during the school year/Winter and one from Lake Arrowhead, California in the Summer and Holidays), I learned early on that I needed one phone number to ring wherever I am so my clients didn’t have to have a different number. Before Vonage, and Magic Jack, there was Connection Tech. They provided a toll-free phone number which is portable in case I leave them, and offer standard features for the office like call waiting, voice mail, etc.. It also has an auto-attendant which can route calls to the right department (sales, marketing, etc.) and also have up to three follow-me numbers. So, sales calls go to the person covering sales, support goes to support, and whether I’m in California, Texas or Hong Kong, my phone rings and no one I work with needs a different number.

As a home-based agent, you could have one option for cruises, one for vacations, one for payments. They might all go to the same person (you) or you might actually have someone cover for you and route the calls to them.

If you’re a one-man show then you might look into a new service called Grand Central from Google, but their terms of service don’t allow “commercial” use, so buyer beware.

VOIP Service / Mobile Phones
Connection Tech tells the phones WHERE to ring. HOW they ring is a different story. I have my cell phone service through Verizon Wireless and have been, for the most part, happy with them for almost 8 years. If I’m out of the office then I answer on that cell. If I’m in the office, however, then I don’t want to use minutes. For California I use my plain old home phone line to get the calls. Connection Tech routes the call, tells me who is calling and I press “1″ to accept the call or “2″ to send the caller to voice mail. When I’m dialed into the system, they provide call waiting, redial, and other features of a business phone line, so I only pay $6 for basic phone service with the local company.

For Texas and other on the road locations I use Vonage. I have a business account which is $49.95 per month and gives me unlimited minutes and long distance. It also gives me access to Vonage Talk, which is software installed on my laptop that gives me the same phone number (incoming and outgoing) through my PC. So, let’s say I’m in Hong Kong and a client calls. Connection Tech routes the call to my local Vonage number and using my headset I can get the call without any extra programming. When I’m in the office the regular phone rings. It really couldn’t be simpler, or cheaper, for that matter.

If you don’t need the toll-free, auto-attendant or multiple mailbox feature, you can skip Connection Tech, but really, for around $9 per month, I wouldn’t. I also wouldn’t use Vonage (Cable Service) for home phone service. I just learned the hard way that relying on VOIP (Voice-over-IP) exclusively for calls is not a good idea. Since I live on an Island sometimes my Internet can get a bit sketchy, which means that my phone service can also get a bit sketchy. By having Connection Tech I can re-route my calls to my AT&T Land Line and not worry.

Here’s something awesome-er.

Yes, it is a parody, but who hasn’t wanted to buy the pepper self-spray for a client now and again?

They make insanely simple software programs that run on the web. If you’re geeky, you can peek under the hood for their Ruby on Rails platform. If you’re cheap, the price is right: lots of their stuff is free. Yes, I said Free.

I use all of their products in different ways. BaseCamp for example is where we collaborate when working on a client project. It keeps all their communication (including e-mails) in one place. For agencies, it could be where you keep all your “post-it” note stuff – confirmations, faxes, etc. I have a couple of clients testing this out on the agency side and I’ll post the results soon.

BackPack by far the best program for personal management. I subscribe to the $5 per month service and essentially it has become my online brain. I have a page with writing assignments, one with my daily to-do list, one with my “honey-do” list to outsource to separate honeys, I have grocery lists, pages of photos uploaded from my camera and phone, marketing ideas, a page with all my major user names/passwords, backup instructions in case I get hit by a bus, etc. You get the picture. Two cool features: You can e-mail stuff into a page so its fast to keep it updated, and you can share it with others. We have a page for each of our volleyball teams to keep all the parents connected without using an outside service.

So, here’s my Thankgiving gift to you. 37Signals. Enjoy over the Holiday Week.

So, I’ve been really excited about the new implemented technology that allows me to leave the house, but DANG, this is pretty awesome. The only thing better is if I could somehow hook up my cappuccino maker to pipe it in… hmmm… must ponder that one.