John Jonas covers phone-service options for working with Filipino VAs, including Unitel, DialPad, Twilio, and WhatsApp. Most providers support softphones and virtual PBX setups. He recommends finding phone-experienced candidates on onlinejobs.ph by searching call center, phone support, or telemarketing.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online. Filipino specialists. This is episode 250, an update to phone services you can use with OFS. So a couple weeks ago I had a podcast episode about phone services and how they work with when you're working with ofs, if you need to listen to that one, you can head back and find it. It's episode 233. I got a lot of responses from people when I sent that out, and they sent me responses saying, here's how we do it or here are other services that you left out. So let me go over of this stuff. So basically a bunch of things that got left off the list that employers told me included Unitel Dial Pad, uma office, Twilio, WhatsApp, Zegocloud, dial desk. And then after I sent another newsletter about it, I got even more things back from people. So my point is there are tons of phone options. They're all pretty similarly priced. Very few of them are free. Frankly, you don't want a free one. You want to pay for something. You want to make sure your quality is good. So now I want to share some some of the actual feedback that I got from people, like some of the stories that I got from people. So this is one that someone recommended. It's called heymarket H e y Market and it's not a phone service, but SMS text messaging service. It's good if you're doing a lot of texting and customer support. So here's another thing from someone that I just had to share this one verbatim. I'm going to read this to you. Any phone provider that provides IP phone services should be able to set up an overseas OFS with a soft phone app, either a cell phone or a computer. I pay $25 a month for her line and my OFS can make unlimited calls to and from the United States. And since her phone is tied into my phone system, she has an extension. I can dial her extension and talk to her. In addition, when people call my business phone number, she has an extension which people could just punch in and get through straight to her. She can also call other countries for the same rates that I pay. So note, setting up a soft phone is what most of the companies that we've mentioned will do. There are other I had a couple people tell me that they had set up a pbx like a phone. I don't even know what that is. A phone exchange. It's like Your own phone server, it routes all your calls and there are companies that will set up a PBX for you so that your whole phone system is totally customizable, whatever you want. And then adding another line to someone maybe is free. I don't, I don't, I didn't get that one. We don't have that. So I don't have an update on that, but it's another option. For those of you in Australia, here was a comment that I got from someone. I'm going to read this one again. You don't need to know how to set up a pbx, although I do is what they say. So this is. And actually this probably applies to anybody around the world. He says you don't need to know how to set up a pbx, you just need to know how to ask your local ISP for a virtual PBX and voiceover IP phones, then describe to the IP to the ISP how you want it set up and they'll do the rest. I use Spintail for my services, but that is of no use to anyone outside of Australia. They also have to think of using the ISP for business, not just getting an Internet connection like at home. He says. I find the smaller boutique ISPs are easier to work with than the larger telcos. Awesome. Helpful. Any local ISP will probably set you up a phone service if you want one. Knowing this, if you're interested in having someone talk on the phone, make cold calls, do customer support, whatever it is, you should be able to go out and find someone in the Philippines to do this for you. Let me give you some additional help. If you go to onlinejobs ph, you can search for call center or phone support or cold calling or telemarketing. Search any of those things and you're gonna get a ton of profiles of people who are really, really good on the phone. And they've been trained by T Mobile or by Comcast or by whoever because they've worked in a call center or they've been doing this for years or they've been doing outbound, outbound cold calling or there's all kinds of people in the Philippines and with this experience they're super reasonably priced. They can tell you, hey, we should use this phone for this because I've used it before and I'm familiar with it. Or you can try this one. I've heard this one's really good from my friends that are doing this. That's super easy to ask them. What service should we use or you can take one of the ones that we've listed. Basically, anything's going to work for you. There are thousands of people in the Philippines with phone experience looking for online work, and it's not that hard to find them, vet them, hire them.
