A Small to Medium-sized Business (SMB) is usually very busy during the day, and they need a good phone they can use to communicate with clients. But is there such a phone? I mean, after all, Straight Talk is a pre-paid cell plan – not an actual phone. Is there hope that such a phone exists?

Meet the Samsung Prepaid Phone with Keyboard, R451C

The Straight Talk Samsung Prepaid Cell Phone has a wide variety of features that you can use to communicate with clients — all without having to sign a contract. That means you don’t have to worry about extra fees for things such as activation, reactivation, cancellation, daily access or overage.

Features

This attractive-looking phone has some of the features that all your other cell phones have like a slider QWERTY keyboard, bluetooth wireless technology, a 1.3 -megapixel camera, Mobile Web services, Voicemail and Call Waiting, Battery talk time up to 4 hours, Standby time up to 14 days, and the charger and services guide. You will need to purchase the Service Talk Service Plan (minutes, text, data and service days) in order for you to use the phone.

Advantages

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of this phone.

1) Economical - I went to Walmart’s online website and searched for “straight talk phone.” There are several there, but the Samsung R451C listed for $79.88. You will find others there that might appeal more to your taste; however, you will pay more for them with the exception of the Samsung R355C. You will need to purchase a Straight Talk Service plan to activate it.

The Service plans come two 30-day Service Plans: the $30 All You Need Plan with 1000 Minutes, 1000 Messages plus 30MB of data, or you can also choose the $45 Unlimited Plan with Unlimited Minutes, Unlimited Messages & Unlimited Mobile Web Access. Okay, so you want more versatility? Choose one of the 3 additional Unlimited Plans which offer unlimited talk, text, and/or multimedia messages and Mobile Web Access during 90, 180 days and 1 year of Service.

2) Phone capabilities are multiple - You can call out, receive calls, view calls that you missed, view the call that is incoming, and use your own voice to dial. In addition, you can text.

3) Size – This cell phone is small enough that you can slip into your pocket. It measures about 2″ x 4.5″

4) This CDMA phone uses the Verizon towers, although I did find that if you have any questions about calls dropping, users of this phone found that Verizon support was not a help.

5) What if you don’t like the ringtones that come with the phone. Can you download ringtones to your computer and transfer them to your phone? The answer is yes. You can also swap ringtones with your friends.

6) The Samsung R451C does not have a sim card, although Walmart does offer the R451G which does have a sim card.

Disadvantages

1) Currently, if you are a small business owner and need to make or receive an international call, you are going to be out of luck as Straight Talk only allows nationwide calls.

2) There is no capability to record videos.

3) A busy businessperson will not have any way to install any apps, so you won’t be able to install JAVA files for internet messaging, etc. The phone has a very limited internet browser.

4) Text messages you send are a minute size of only 160 characters and are not saved in streamed or chat format meaning they are saved individual text messages appear in your inbox and are not threaded.

While this article is not meant to be an all-inclusive review of whether or not Straight Talk has a prepaid cell phone that SMBs can use to communicate with clients, it does give you a view of the Straight Talk Samsung R451C. Would I recommend this for a small business owner? I can’t advise you on that; you have to make your own decision. Personally, I would do more research to see if there might be something better.

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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. Borlok Virtual Assistants is the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Samsung R451C + Unlimited Plan

Now, I’m going to discuss further with you about what a virtual assistant should look for in a phone system. While there are a few different options that you can look at such as a landline, a cell phone or VoIP, I’m going to suggest that you look at an online phone service.

An online phone service should be inexpensive.

It goes without saying that you need to watch your expenses, especially in a down economy. Look for a service that will have a wide variety of options at an economical price.

An online phone service should have a wide variety of features.

It’s interesting what peoples’ thoughts are as to what they should have as features. At the least, you will want options like voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, and perhaps the ability to have conferencing or fax capabilities. You will want to have the ability to customize your phone service to fit your needs.

An online phone service should have a customer-service oriented support desk.

There’s nothing worse than trying to set up an extension or have something go wrong with your phone system only to have no one to help you out when you get into trouble. Who are you going to call — or email — or phone? Does your online phone service have 24/7 service. You might even want to check and see if they have answers to common questions in an easily-accessible place that you can look at. Or, better yet, do they have live chat?

An online phone service should be user-friendly.

I’ve used online phone services that are extremely difficult to figure out, and you couldn’t get any support; so you want a phone service that is user-friendly. It should be easy to use and to operate. I have found Phone.com to be very affordable, easy to use, and versatile.

As a virtual assistant, it is critical that your clients be able to reach you sometimes by phone. If you can’t always be available by phone, they should be able to leave you a message and have a return call within 24 hours. You should shop around for the best phone system that will handle the things you need it to handle; however, you should always look for a phone system that is inexpensive, flexible with multiple features, have a support system where you can get help, and be user friendly. After all, your phone system is going to be the first impression that a client gets of your virtual assistant business. You want to start out on the right foot with them.
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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. Borlok Virtual Assistants is the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

Provide a comprehensive customer service experience for your clients. Make yourself accessible.

As we remember, there are two groups of customers — internal and external. To service them, there are multiple types of Customer Support Solutions that a business can provide. Many businesses only tend to focus on one kind of service; they get really good at using one of the following types of customer service:

*  Phone Service

*  Email Service

*  Live Chat

Wouldn’t it be much better for you if you provided a comprehensive customer service experience for your clients? You’re probably scratching your head and saying “What do you mean by comprehensive customer service experience?”

A small business can utilize multiple methods to provide award-winning assistance to their customer or client. Here’s what I’m suggesting. Why not combine all three of the services I mentioned and cement them together with the use of a knowledge base and a forum? Let’s look deeper into the three main services:

Phone Service

We all are familiar with phone service; we use either a land line, cell phone, or VoIP all day long. The problem is though that many, many businesses have implemented menus for answering their phones and made it next to impossible for a client to get to an actual human. By the time the client does get to an actual representative, the client is usually irritated and seeing red. You are a virtual assistant. Don’t let that happen to your business!

Email Service

You may be familiar with companies that utilize email ticket service. I’m sure you’ve sent in an email to a business and been told your ticket number is xxx. These same companies have the ability to implement set responses that they can send out to the person at the click of a button. They can receive reporting, they can customize how their tickets look, assign tickets to users, and customize fields to fit them. This type of service is superior to phone in my estimation because you have a written record of all the conversations that you have had with a customer and can refer back to it at any given time. This allows you to provide a more advanced pleasurable experience for your customer.

Live Chat

Live Support Software (also known as Live Chat or Live Help) refers to handling incoming customer inquiries with the use of an instant messaging application. Similar to phone service where the customer has instant interaction with a customer representative, the benefits of live chat are numerous. Let me show you just a few:

*  There is little or no cost to implement it; it’s all done over the Internet.

*  Most live chat is fully customizable

*  You can monitor your clients visits with ease

*  Set hours can be established for the customer care representative(s) to be online or offline.

*  There are even more benefits not listed here.

As a virtual assistant, you want to be able to provide your clients with easy access to you should they have questions or want to order services. This is why I recommend implementing a comprehensive customer service experience for your client. To do this, you use a combination of phone, email, and live chat; BUT you also give your clients two additional types of service:

Knowledge Base

Think of a knowledge base as an online library that your client can go to get answers to common questions. You can add articles that you’ve written, put them in your knowledge base, and even categorize them.

Forum

In addition, you can set up your own forum. A forum is different from a live chat in that the forum is discussion threads that do not show in real time. To see new posts, the user will need to refresh their internet browser.

With those five methods, you can give your clients the very best customer service experience. Don’t kid yourself – providing first-class customer service is vital to the success of your business. I know of at least one company out there that will host four out of the five methods into a hosting solution with absolutely no cost. That’s right; I said no cost.

Comm100 is an open source company that provides services to large Fortune 500 companies. If they can provide a comprehensive customer service experience, then you can do the same for your clients. Why not look into it right now while you’re thinking about it. You won’t regret it.

When you bought your Straight Talk phone, you needed to purchase a service plan that went with it. The service plan you purchased was obviously pretty dependent on your budget at the time, right? Well, now it’s time to make sure your service plan doesn’t run out on you.

Refill Options

There are two main types of refill options you have open to you using their website:

1. Automatic refill – When your service days are over, your can have your phone refilled automatically and charged to a credit card of your choice.
2. Refill on-demand – You would have to renew each month manually in order to continue your plan

How do I know when my service plan expires?

1. Go to Straight Talk and click on “Check Balance/Service Date in the upper right-hand corner of your window (It’s right next to a star).

1. Left click Submit (You’ll see the fourth field is Service End Date.) Now, you can also check how many minutes you have left, how many SMS text messages you have, and how many megabytes of data available for Web browsing you have.

If you need to refill your phone, click on the Home button.

1.        Click on the Refill/Enroll Tab

You will see three options on this page:

a.  Need to buy a service plan. This is where you would log into your account.
b.  Refill by adding a service card
c.  Enroll in Auto-Refill Now! (Optional)

2.        Choose option a by entering in your email address and password and click on Log In. (If you don’t have an account yet, you’ll need to register. Just click the tab that says Activate/Register
3.        Click on submit if your phone information is showing correctly
4.        Choose your service plan by clicking in the dot to the left of the service plan you want
5.        Choose Auto-Refill or Refill On Demand
6.        Click Submit
7.        Read the information and make sure your credit card information is correct. If not, you’ll need to call Customer Service and request them to edit it. Also, Write down your service end date and put it in a place that you can find easily.
8.        Read the terms and conditions and then check the box to indicate you have done so.
9.        Click on Submit
10.     Click Print or Done

That’s all there is to it.

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Pam Lokker is a skillful writer and proficient virtual assistant. Borlok Virtual Assistants is the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery.

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