Archive for December, 2009

The Top 10 Grasshopper Posts of 2009

new-years

It has been a great year here at Grasshopper. We made some pretty significant changes at the company (you may recall the GotVMail to Grasshopper re-brand) and are looking forward to many more improvements in 2010.

One of our big initiatives this year was the addition of the Grasslands blog. Launched in September, the response has been terrific. We are always looking for new ways to help entrepreneurs and the blog has provided us with an additional means to do so.

In case you weren’t here when the blog launched, we thought we’d fill you in with the…

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Balancing Life & Work in a Virtual Office

work-life-balance

Many of the customers who use our Virtual PBX service are entrepreneurs starting out in a 1-2 person operation, working out of their homes or even their cars. They have created a virtual office for their business.

There are plenty of articles out there on creating a virtual office but there are not very many on what to do once you have done so. Working in the place you live can lead to unhappiness, burnout and tension at home. However, it can be an ideal situation if you properly balance life & work responsibilities.

Here are three tips for creating a work/life balance in your virtual office:

#1 – Create Boundaries

Set Up an Area Specifically for Work

Having a dedicated area will help you remember that there needs to be a separation between work and the rest of your life. Whether it’s an office in the house, a spare bedroom or a certain corner of the kitchen table, make sure that spot is where work takes place and nothing else.

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Choosing the Right Toll Free Number for Your Business

As most people know, Grasshopper is a virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses. We have tons of great features (if we do say so ourselves), including call forwarding, unlimited extensions, voice mails delivered to your email and more. Our most popular feature is, of course, toll free numbers.

Toll free numbers

Toll free numbers can be extremely valuable to a business when they are looking to project a professional image, sound bigger or just give their customers an easy phone number to remember. 800, 888, 877 and 866 numbers from Grasshopper have helped tens of thousands of small businesses grow over the past six years and will continue to do so in the future.

How do I choose the right toll free number for my business?

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GH Book Review: Viral Loop

viral-loop-cover

Thanks to a little free time over Thanksgiving, I was able to tackle my massive pile of “to-be-read” books over the holiday. First on the list was Adam Penenberg’s “Viral Loop”.

In it, Penenberg discusses the viral nature of today’s Web 2.0 success stories. As a precursor, he examines some historical case studies to demonstrate that viral marketing has been around a lot longer than most people think. Who knew Tupperware, the famed brand responsible for housing people’s leftovers, was the first to employ the tactic. They recruited thousands of women after World War 2 to host Tupperware parties and had the host act as a direct sales rep for the brand.

By motivating each hostess with a financial incentive for the success of each party, Tupperware was able to mobilize an entire army of housewives, pushing their brand to millions.

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How Do I Dial a Vanity Number on My Blackberry?

blackberry-vanity-numbersWhile this may seem like a no-brainer for some, it’s actually a common question!

“How do I dial a vanity number on my Blackberry?”

If you don’t know what a vanity number is, it is a custom phone number (toll free or local) that spells out a particular word. Here are a few examples:

  • 1-800-Flowers
  • 1-800-Contacts
  • 1-888-BestBuy

So, how exactly do you go about dialing a vanity number on your Blackberry?

Well you could try to figure out what letter corresponds to what number, or you could simply hold down the ALT key. That’s it!

By holding down the ALT key, you can dial every letter on the keyboard, spelling out any number you need, including your Grasshopper vanity number!

Grasshopper in the News: November – December

We have some great interviews with our co-founders this month. Read those and all of the latest stories featuring Grasshopper:

Sign Up Now: Unlimited Voice to Text Free Trial Ends Today!

Free Trial Ends Today!

Just a reminder, the Grasshopper Unlimited Voice to Text 60-day free trial ends today for most of our customers.

  • Do you love having your voice mail transcribed?
  • Did you enjoy not having to listen to your voice mail?
  • Will you miss it?

If you answered yes to these questions, head over to your account and sign up today.

The Unlimited Voice to Text feature is just $10 a month and each voice mail transcription is done digitally to ensure your privacy and a quick turnaround. The option of human transcription is just a click away (at no extra cost!) and allows for improved accuracy in your transcription.

Read more about Voice to Text:

*The Unlimited Voice to Text feature is now referred to as “Read Your Voicemail”

How To: Manage, Tag & Map Messages

Instead of the usual Friday Flix videos we present on the team blog, this week we thought we would provide a “How To” on managing messages in your Grasshopper account.

This video gives a quick overview on managing voice mails, including mapping the call to a specific location on a map, adding contact info, sending an email and storing.

Log in to your Grasshopper account to get started. Don’t have one? Sign up today!

Unlimited Voice to Text: Free Trial Over Monday, Sign up Now!

At the beginning of October we announced the launch of the new Unlimited Voice to Text feature and the feedback has been great:

twitter-voice-to-text“This is probably the *best* innovation in voice mail I’ve seen in years. The automated transcription is amazingly accurate, so much that I didn’t realize the first couple of times that it was real. Just assumed it was boilerplate text for marketing the new feature.”

“Great Voice to text feature!! Thanks for bringing it in house. I’ve already signed up to the service.”

@elizabethpw: my voicemail system now emails me voice-to-text transcriptions of each voicemail. THAT IS AWESOME!

@ducttape: Grasshopper phone service just added VMs to text something I’ve wanted for a while – Nice!

As a reminder to everyone, the 60 day free trial is over December 7th (that’s Monday!), for those customers who were signed up prior to October 9th.

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