Welcome to the Message Base Newsletter

I am pleased to announce the launch our new MessageBase newsletter, aptly called "OnMessage"! The aim of our quarterly newsletter is to provide news from the "virtual office" industry, ensure you are kept up-to-date with our service offering and show how we are successfully working with other businesses.

I hope you enjoy our news and wish you a prosperous November.

Andrew Wright
Managing Director

Any business can have a big company image!

If you are a small business you want to project an image, to anybody calling in, of a well established and structured organisation.  If you are a larger business, then you want to protect that image as it is a key element of you brand identity.

In a small business, the phone could go unanswered if staff are visiting client sites or are in a meeting.  Even mid-sized businesses find themselves resorting to temporary staff who don’t understand their business or recognise their regular callers. In each case, the carefully nurtured image built up in a customer or prospects mind can be devalued.

MessageBase FrontDesk service answers your telephone promptly and consistently every time, every day.

With personalised scripts available on our database, callers get a courteous and consistent answer and are transferred to the required person.

If they are not available, then a message can be taken or the caller has the option of leaving a message on their voice mail.  This service can be combined with calendar management, enabling a more personal response to be given to the caller.

Moreover, FrontDesk will be lower cost than your part-time or full-time personnel and you won’t have to worry about quality of service or sickness cover. Whether you are one person or four hundred, let MessageBase answer that phone!

For more information click here or call
0800 01 81 60

New messageBase Services  

MessageBase In-Touch Plus is ideal for the smaller business needing a "virtual receptionist" service to give them more time with their customers and to help improve their personal productivity. MessageBase will receive your calls, screen them if required, and then transfer them, to you or your staffs' mobile phones.

In-Touch Plus provides you with a 'remote extension' by combining the Vodafone 'Total Business Plan' and MessageBase professional telephone answering services. In-Touch' includes gives you the following features and benefits:

• A STD or NGN telephone number answered personally in your business name – manage your time better!
• The first 40 transfers to nominated numbers
• Unlimited free connect time from MessageBase Centre for call transfers ('patch through')
• Uncharged calls 24/7 from your company mobiles to any UK landline for up to 60 minutes per call
• Lo-cost call rates to your designated overseas destinations from your mobile via the MessageBase
• Calls between your company mobiles are free minutes

• Keep your existing mobile number
• MessageBase 'WhereAbouts Service' for 3 people at no charge – no more mobile VM!
• New phone/PDA option for clients' changing networks – get your emailed messages on your phone!

MessageBase Mobile ExtensionAnywhere Clients, again combined with the Vodafone tariff, provides all the benefits outlined above plus, the same facilities and functionality they would get from an in-house system phone. Call control/CLI display, directories, hold/call transfer, call conferencing and dial '9' access to lo-cost international calls are all available by "pairing" the mobile phone with MessageBase PCS 50/60 Phone Partner application running on your laptop or PC.

This solution is great for home workers, who can use ADSL/VPN services. However, with the rise of Wireless 'hotspot' based services in public places - e.g. conference centres, hotels, airports, coffee shops, restaurants, etc. – this is the ideal solution for the mobile user. All voice calls are carried across the GSM network, so the VPN service is only used for call control between the PCS and MessageBase Centre. This means that the lack of any VoIP 'Quality of Service' offering on Wireless LANs or residential ADSL services has no effect on voice quality.

Service subscriptions start from £80 per month, for more information contact Message Base.

Ten Ways to motivate your staff

Keep them involved Push autonomy, but be available Tell them when they are doing well Keep the buzz quotients high… ...but see the upside of mellow Take them out to lunch Introduce flexible working Promote talented people Hold a good bash once in a while Do your own job well!!

Why have an office at all?

As a business grows it often moves from the founders homes, to a serviced office and then to taking the ‘big risk’; taking a long lease on an office or small building.

These phases can come along quite rapidly, often driven by the need to house non-core staff and perhaps before the business has fully established itself and become financially stable.

Is there an alternative? Yes, the “Virtual Office”. With modern technology and ‘hub’ based support services, small office/home office (soho) businesses can delay, perhaps indefinitely, the progression through the phases we mentioned above.

Virtual Office Personal Assistants can answer your telephone (24/7 if necessary) transfer your calls to remotely located colleagues and staff, manage your mail, bank cheques, organise and deliver sales campaigns and follow up via telemarketing.  Orders can be received and dispatched for fulfilment.  Obviously, typing via audio or wav files can be processed and invoices produced and sent out.  Furthermore, first line debt collection and calendar management and/or appointment making services are available.

All this can help you postpone the dreaded day of signing that long lease – perhaps to a day when the position and growth rate of the business are more certain.  It’s certainly an option worth investigating.

To find out how a virtual office could benefit your business click here.

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Case Study IBIS  

IBIS was founded and is operated by people with real TV industry knowledge and the company has grown consistently since its foundation to provide Integrated Broadcast Information Systems. With over twenty years' expertise in managing integrated software solutions IBIS brings stability and experience to the broadcast industry. The powerful combination of long years' loyalty and real broadcast experience provides an exceptional staff resource.  Over the decades, IBIS has become trusted around the world to provide mission critical software elements  within complex broadcast and new media systems.

Amongst the team they have real experience of the launch of hundreds of channels – from Channel 4, BSB, BBC World, More4 in the UK, to channels in the USA, Gulf and in Australia. They bring to projects their collected experience as programme editors; programme presenters; engineers; maintenance engineers; in-house application developers and more.

Throughout IBIS's development as a provider of clever, uncomplicated Media Asset Management Solutions, the IBIS practice of providing proven systems based on the cornerstones of innovation, reliability and understanding has evolved.

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MessageBase & IBIS

MessageBase began working with IBIS in April 2005. IBIS growing rapidly and staff numbers growing to 30 or more, it was no longer possible to interrupt the planned work of key staff by handling calls in an ad-hoc fashion in house. Added to the need to provide IBIS's enterprise customers with a first class, professional response to their calls there was the potential of 'losing' valuable new business.

IBIS investigated a permanent new hire to do this job, but when compared with outsourcing the switchboard service there was no contest especially, as IBIS had added a second site and thus the requirement was more complex and less manageable internally – what with the need to manage and rely on temporary staff to cover sickness and holiday absences.

MessageBase now takes calls from both IBIS UK locations, transferring ('patching') calls back to staff via their DDI extension numbers completely transparently to the callers and with complete consistency.

In September 2006 IBIS outsourced their 'Technical Support Line' to MessageBase. IBIS customers call the 'Support Line with their issue or fault and MessageBase, using a proprietary scheduling software package logs the call and allocates and IBIS technician, providing the caller with a reference number. The allocated technician is then called by MessageBase or if unavailable an alternative is contacted. The software is updated with the response and solution to the issue and provides IBIS with detailed statistics on the number and type of call-out by customers.

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Business Benefits of a Manage Switchboard Service

Clearly, the outsourcing of this function makes business sense to IBIS. Many other ME and enterprises businesses have also found many advantages, including:

• Professional & consistent service
• Improved customer service levels
• Project & protect the 'brand' of the business
• Reduced management overhead
• Reduced staff costs

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"For more than three years MessageBase has made a key contribution to maintaining customer service levels as we have grown our business around the world.  MessageBase provides a managed switchboard service for our two UK offices and a 24/7 Support Line for our key enterprise customers". 

Andrew Winter, Sales & Marketing Director,IBIS Limited, Surrey & Somerset, UK