Set up a Virtual Office

A virtual office is very important to give you a worldwide presence, but also free up much of your time. A virtual office is just that “virtual” it is not real in as much as you do not have an office in London, New York and Tokyo, but to your customers you are a global business with a global presence.

How does a Virtual Office work well you can order Virtual Offices on different levels, the basic level is that the customer phones or faxes you (to your New York numbers for example) they receive a professional pre-recorded message asking them to leave a message. This is then converted into a wav file which is sent to your email. You can pick this up anywhere in the world (can be opened with free download such as real player) and respond to the customer. You are also given a New York address to put on all your stationary, website, business cards etc. When mail arrives at this address it is then forwarded to wherever you want it sent. Clearly there is a forwarding postal cost, so limiting snail mail and sending out all invoices etc via the internet is wise, you may want to consider which place to have a Virtual Office if you are planning to receive a lot of post (snail mail). Also if customers send a fax it is sent to your email as an attachment.

The more advanced level is the same as the first except for the fact that a real person politely answers the phone in your company name, he/she can then either transfer the call to you in Barbados or wherever you are living or take a message, so that you can respond later.

Each level of virtual office is priced differently, obviously if you are paying for someone to answer calls this will be a lot more expensive.

Many companies now operate in such a way that this is not really necessary. Customers are used to not speaking directly with someone, but will be irritated if nobody gets back to them in a reasonable timescale to deal with their enquiry. This is good business sense, but there is no reason why you cannot access your wav files in the car (as a passenger) from a PDA, laptop or Mobile Phone, or on the beach, or wherever.

Virtual Offices are certainly a useful tool in preparation of your offshore business, one that many business owners overlook thinking it will be very expensive, it is not. Virtual Offices provide a very cost effective way of dealing with the day to day running of the business, but giving a corporate impression to the consumer/customer. This frees up your time for much more productive tasks which we shall talk about later.

The most cost effective way to set up a Virtual Office is to direct incoming telephone numbers from any global location to your Skype account, and set up a Mail-Forwarding Address. You will find Virtual Office info in our Resources section.

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