Over the past few months, Grasshopper headquarters have been “going green”. A new solar power system is in the final stages of installation and pretty soon, about 20% of the building’s power (including HVAC) will be generated by sunlight.

This is an exciting step for Grasshopper and it got us thinking, what else can we be doing to green up this place?

As it turns out, our own product actually helps with that! A virtual phone system is a great way to help your company go green.

Work from home

With the Grasshopper call forwarding feature, you can work from home and never miss a call. More importantly, you don’t have to commute to an office.

According to a Huffington Post article by Jason Seeger, if more companies encouraged telecommuting, the U.S could use 625 million fewer barrels of oil each year, cut greenhouse emissions by 107 million tons of carbon dioxide and save $43 billion on gas. Wow!

Save a few trees

Did you know that every year each person in the United States uses roughly 749 pounds of paper? That’s a lot of paper and a lot of trees!

In most offices, faxes use more paper than any other piece of equipment. Think about it. You send a fax cover sheet, the actual fax and of course it prints a confirmation (or a page telling you it failed). A single page fax could result in four pieces of paper being used.

With virtual faxing, you can save paper and reduce your annual usage. Simply have your customers send faxes to your Grasshopper number and they will arrive in your inbox. You can even store them in your account.

No handouts

You walk into a conference room and there on the table is a presentation printed out for you. Why? With today’s technology it seems unnecessary to print out copies for everyone involved in a meeting.

Virtual meetings are easy and especially with remote team members or out-of-state vendors, sharing a screen is much easier than trying to go over a printed document. Free services like Join.me are great for screen sharing and combined with your virtual phone conference calling feature, you can have a virtual meeting in minutes…without all the extra paper.

Companies across the US are taking steps to go green. Whether it’s using a virtual phone system, offering employees work from home days or greening your building, there are a lot of great things happening.

What is your company doing to go green?

1. Only Give Out One Number

Giving out just one phone number instead of an office, fax and cell phone makes things simple for you and even simpler for those trying to reach you. Clients, colleagues and friends will know they can always reach you when they dial your Grasshopper number.

One phone number can ring up to six numbers including your home, office and cell phone.  And if you can’t take the call (or simply don’t want to), our advanced voicemail and fax handling options allow you to easily check and manage messages.

2. Throw Out Your Fax Machine

While we don’t advise actually throwing away your old fax machine, our virtual fax feature will ensure you use it a lot less. With our virtual phone system you can use your toll free or local number to receive faxes.  Each fax can then be viewed from any computer or compatible mobile device.

If you have an advanced number then you are already capable of receiving faxes. Callers can simply send faxes to your number just like any other fax number.

To set up forwarding faxes via email:

• Click Settings
• Click on Notification
• Enter the email addresses where you would like to receive your faxes

3.  Save Voicemails and Faxes to Your Computer

Have you ever had to listen to saved message after saved message to find the one you were looking for?  Grasshopper’s virtual phone system allows you to save all of your messages and faxes and then download them to your computer.  Keep your messages organized and your inbox clean.

To save voicemail messages:

• Click to play the message
• Click the download icon (arrow under type)
• Click Save
• In this next window choose file name and location to save

4. Give Clients 24/7 Access to Frequently Requested Documents

Fax-on-Demand allows your callers to instantly access important forms and printed information without needing your help. This is a great way to get menus, order forms and other documents into the hands of your customers faster.

• Call in to your Grasshopper account from a fax machine
• From your Main Greeting press *
• Enter 6 followed by #
• Enter the PIN for the Fax-on-Demand extension
• Continue to follow the voice prompts to store or delete documents

If you want more information about any of our features, take a look at our How It Works page.