\nRecently\n Copy Express has had a lot of work come in for business cards and \nstationery thanks to Vodafone discontinuing support for email for their \nclients. Business which had a \u2018@clear.net.nz\u2019, \u2018@paradise.net.nz\u2019, etc \nemail address suddenly found themselves in a situation where they had to\n scramble to get new ones, most of whom ended up at gmail, hotmail, and \nlive.com. This resulted the business having to update all their \nmarketing to have the new address and passing that on to existing \nclients. This can lead to the situation where business may lose \ncustomers because their customers have the old contact details, miss the\n new ones, then give up and go to someone else when they cannot reach \nyour business. To prevent this situation I want to discuss some simple \nsteps you should follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks\n to the internet, being able to set up all your lines of communication \nis easier than ever. It just takes a little bit of planning, and some \nsmall expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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If\n all your phone calls happen on your mobile, then it\u2019s simple to change \nphone companies as they are required to transfer your number. In many \ncases it\u2019s just filling out a form on their website and waiting a day or\n two for the change over to happen. If you have a landline, that\u2019s more \ntroublesome as landlines are tied to physical phone exchanges, so if you\n move location your may have to connect to a new exchange so you\u2019ll have\n to have a new number. One way around it is to get a free phone number \nwhich isn\u2019t tied to any physical location, but that\u2019s a costly option. Another\n way is to ditch the landline completely and go Voice Over Internet \nProtocol. These digitally based phone systems rely on the internet so \nthe number you hire from the VOIP can connect to any phone you like and \nmoved between providers. Here at Copy Express, we use VOIP as our phone \nsystem, allowing us to have a low cost internal PBX to manage all our \nphones, giving us the ability to add or remove phones (including \nmobiles) on the fly, and even have calls redirected to our mobiles \nshould our local connections fail. It does take time and money to set it\n up but it does give you the flexibility to meet your changing business \nneeds. As a side note, it looks like the phone company will phase out \nlandlines in favour of VOIP over the coming years as the fiber network \nroll out continues so you might as well be ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Huh?\n Who uses faxes these days? If you must have one (if you\u2019re a lawyer, \ninsurance agent, etc) then use a VOIP based systems instead of paying \nfor a fax line. Most VOIP providers can supply a number where faxes will\n be converted to an email and sent to you. If you have to fax to \nsomeone, they can reverse the process. A lot less costly solution for \nthe rare times you need faxing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Okay\n this is a trickier one. With the demand for postal services continually\n shrinking, a lot of businesses are dropping post boxes and other forms \nof mailing address. As someone who gets all their bills electronically, \nthe only time my mail box get used is for mailers, local newspapers, and\n flyers. Still for situations where real mail gets sent out to you, you \ndo need a physical address. Normally were your business is located is \nfine as that\u2019s the place where posties and couriers will be dropping \nthings off. It\u2019s also interesting to note that generally, customers will\n perceive a business isn\u2019t as legitimate if it doesn\u2019t have a physical \nlocation.So to keep the flexibility for a changing postal \naddress there are two rules of thumb. Firstly have your address on your \nwebsite as most people look up such things through online searches these\n days. Secondly where you do have to have a postal address on physical \nitems, like business cards or letterhead paper, it makes sense only ever\n order enough to take care of your next three or six months of needs. \nThis is where small run printers like us at Copy Express are the idea \nsolution to the situation, allowing you to order \u2018just enough\u2019 in a \n\u2018just in time\u2019 time frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The\n internet is where everyone does their business theses days. If you \ndon\u2019t have even a landing page for your business, you\u2019re going to lose \nout on a lot of potential customers. Now for some businesses, using one \nprovided by their internet provider website hosting package will work \nfine, a \u2018www.your_business_name.internet_company.net.nz\u2019 style of name. \nThe only problem is that if you change provider, you lose that address \nas the internet company provides it as part of the service.A \nbetter solution is to buy your own internet address (domain). It\u2019s just \nlike a mobile phone number that can move with you as you change website \nhosts. You have to pay a licence the address every year but the cost is \ngenerally a lot less than a cheap cell phone plan and you can get \ndiscounts for prepaying for several years. At the time of writing, I was\n able to price two years of a \u2018.com\u2019 with a \u2018.co.nz\u2019 for less than $50 a\n year as an introduction price, but realistically you can pick up a \n\u2018.co.nz\u2019 for about $60-150 per year running costs including paying the \nwebsite host to point the domain to your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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As\n outlined at the artical opening, relying on a internet provider for \nyour email address is risky, if they decide to change the email system \nor drop it completely then you lose a major line of contact. Now going \nwith a free email site, like gmail or hotmail, isn\u2019t considered to be as\n unprofessional as it once was simply as everyone needs an email address\n and they work just fine. That being said, if you want to \ntake your image to the next level of professionalism, then having the \nemail address use your web domain name is the way to go. Again most \ninternet domain providers offer the option of one or more email address \nto your domain (ie sales@your_business.co.nz) for an additional annual \ncharge. Again I able to add a single email address to my test \u2018.com\u2019 for\n an extra $10 a month with the same features as a generic gmail account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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What\n I have covered are the biggest \u2018addresses\u2019 you have to keep relevant to\n stay in business, and planning to make them independent of anyone \nprovider makes it easier to change them without disrupting your \ncustomers ability to contact you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Need\n advice on managing these small but important parts of your business? \nBoth Copy Express and Business Express will be able to you help you with\n this in different ways. Why not call us to find out more.<\/em><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently Copy Express has had a lot of work come in for business cards and stationery thanks to Vodafone discontinuing support for email for their clients. Business which had a \u2018@clear.net.nz\u2019, \u2018@paradise.net.nz\u2019, etc email address suddenly found themselves in a situation where they had to scramble to get new ones, most of whom ended up … Continue reading “Preventing external forces changing how people reach you”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}