Ruby’s bells are ringing

‘Virtual receptionists’ offer a friendly voice all over U.S.

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Jul 4, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

From her Ruby cubicle in the Pearl District, Becky Kari is a nice voice at the other end of the line for businesses across the country.

Jim Clark / Portland Tribune

If you call Mano Furs in Baltimore (410-323-4175), instead of a Chesapeake Bay accent you might notice something familiar about the voice that answers the phone.

“We get all these sweet old ladies asking, ‘Is this Mano Swartz?’ because the store dropped the Swartz,” Alison Wenk says. She answers the phone for Mano at Ruby Receptionists, a virtual receptionist company based in the Pearl District. Wenk, 23, is one of 17 staff members who intercept calls for 480 small businesses spread out across the nation.

Generally, the good ladies of Baltimore don’t have much time to chat. But they could if they wanted to.

“Yes, we’re allowed to interact,” Wenk says cheerfully.

More than an answering service (which just passes on messages) and far more than an auto attendant (“Press 1 for sales”), Ruby Receptionists tries to provide a complex human interaction in a few short seconds. High-speed Internet access and fast computers make the service possible – that and a quick mind and endless patience.

Wenk usually has five or six windows open on her computer screen as she fields calls. Calls can be picked up by any of the women – and they are all women – in the room. They each take an average of 200 per day. The TeleCall software uses caller ID to automatically bring up the name and details of the company. For instance, if it’s a call for Dr. Kelly Fitzpatrick, who performs gastric bypass surgery in Eugene, Wenk consults the doctor’s calendar while greeting the caller.

Notes on screen tell her exactly what to say. She has a pleasant intonation: musical but not too singsongy, warm but not annoyingly perky.

Clicking on buttons on the screen will direct the call to the doctor’s various lines and inboxes. There’s an electronic “in and out board,” and voice messages can be forwarded as audio files to e-mail. There are a lot of options, all held together by human intelligence.

Wenk also e-mails clients constantly. (On a recent day her archived inbox had 27,673 items.) She also keeps an instant-message window open so she can chat with colleagues or silently notify them when she’s busy. And during downtime she reads her favorite news sites – BBC and MSN – and a Chicago Cubs ticker.

The key is to stay one step ahead of the robots by doing what humans do best.

Just as Scotland is considered a better place for a call center than, say, London, because the labor can be inexpensive and the people are pleasant, so Portlanders, it seems, have cornered the nice market.

“West Coast people have a mellow accent that’s not too difficult to understand, and we seem to be a little bit more patient than our East Coast callers,” says Cassandra Angelechio, 20. She’s been with Ruby for eight months and likes it a lot, working the 5:30 a.m.-to-2 p.m. shift.

“Sixty-five percent of our business is on the East Coast,” says Jill Nelson, founder and president of Ruby Receptionists. “And it’s that Portland personality that people on the East Coast get blown away by.”

‘Let’s make this work!’

Nelson started the company in 2003 to sell office administration services, calling it WorkSource Inc.

“As soon as we put the Web site up people started calling from the East Coast wanting virtual receptionists, so we said, ‘Let’s make this work!’ ” Nelson says. In 2005 they started doing business as Ruby Receptionists. Local branding firm Sockeye Creative came up with the name to personify the experience.

“They’re incredibly personable and professional and kind of fun – they get to know their customer’s customer,” Sockeye boss Andy Fraser says. They considered Moneypenny, Switchboard Sally, E-Line, Doris. “We wanted something short, old but still fresh.” Ruby harked back to the days of the indispensable secretary/receptionist.

Most of the company’s new business comes from key word searches on Google Ads and Yahoo Overture. Ruby Receptionists pays the portals from 5 cents to $5 for anyone who clicks through after searching for “virtual receptionist.”

“We like to think of ourselves as ‘remote receptionists’ because we’re real people, but ‘virtual’ is what people are searching for,” Nelson says.

Last April, when the only similar company, Perceptionist in Ohio, got into the drug prescription call-center business, it transferred its clients to Ruby. In May Ruby won a Top Ten Growth Award from the Portland Business Alliance and plans to move to bigger Pearl digs in October.

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