A large number of people are getting ready to start their own business and hoping to make it to the big leagues. Having a great idea or serving a real need is a great start, but eventually there will be people who hire you to do this. When first starting a business in the Los Angeles area it is common to work from home in a study or a converted space. Most home office spaces have little more than a desk, computer and filing cabinet. That’s perfectly fine in the beginning, what else do you really need?

However, once you start getting clients there will come a time when you’ll need a business setting that will impress. Now what? Do you invite your clients into your cramped “home office” and hope they don’t think that they have made a mistake, or do you rent out a space to conduct business, a real office space, with money that you don’t yet have to spare? Well don’t worry, there is a third option.

It’s become more and more common for people to use what is called a temporary office. This is a business environment where you can meet clients and present a professional atmosphere. You can rent virtual office in Beverly Hills for exactly as long as you need it and use it for those times when you’d rather meet in a conference room, instead of at some diner.

There is no need to sign a lease for a space that you may not even need to use more than once or twice a month for quite some time. You don’t have to throw your money away to get a client anymore. It is true that you have to spend money to make money, but whoever said you need to spend more than you have.

A prestigious address in an iconic building could be yours! Virtual offices around the world are offering a fully furnished workplace with experienced, professional staff, a world class address, reception services and even fresh, brewed coffee. Basically, all of the amenities of an upscale office space without the overhead.

Services offered by affordable virtual offices includes: office suites, team meeting rooms with flip charts and white boards, receptionist to greet clients and answer phones, mail services; package signing, mail forwarding, fully stocked cafes, fresh brewed coffee, conference room time and many more tailored amenities.

Wow your clients with panoramic views, fully stocked cafes, spot on reception and a Beverly Hills address. Provide yourself with a quiet haven from the coffee shop. Reduce your overhead by eliminating the need to lease a building, hire a full-time staff and pay utilities. A virtual office experience will have you looking forward to go into the office!

No one likes to encounter bad customer service. With the dislike of bad service being unanimous, no one would provide anything but excellent service, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. It would seem that more businesses than you think provide less than superb customer service.

If you are thinking of starting up a business of your own, you are likely wondering what you could do to avoid being labeled as having bad customer service. There are a few key things that businesses do that make their service undesirable by their customers and they may not even realize they are doing it.

The first thing that a lot of people do is answer their cellphone when they are in noisy environments. This is a big complaint from many people. If you are in a noisy area such as a mall or restaurant, don’t answer business calls. It leads to you looking unprofessional. The best way to avoid this is to get an answering service to handle all of your calls. If you do this, all of your calls can be set to be forwarded during times when you probably shouldn’t be trying to conduct business.

To go along with the whole answering the phone thing, the majority of professionals don’t usually answer the phone themselves. They normally have a secretary who does that for them or they utilize an answering service like we talked about earlier.

Another mistake that is made by a lot of people is that they set all their calls to go straight to voicemail. Nothing is more annoying than trying to get a hold of someone to inquire what may be very important information to the customer, and getting a recording prompting you to leave a message. Unless it is absolutely necessary, do not do it!

Answering services with a menu should only be used if you are the president of a monstrous company that has dozens of different departments. People don’t like having to sit through a lengthy automated service rattling off departments and numbers one after another just to get to the end and realize that it took so long that they have forgotten what they need to tell you.

Last but not least, make sure that if you do indeed go with an answering service that the recordings are clear and easy to understand. Don’t make your messages too long and whoever records the messages speaks clearly. The best test is to call the service yourself and give it a listen. Tweak it until it is perfect and remember to change messages as things in your company change in order to keep customers up to date. Follow these few tips and you should never find yourself labeled with bad customer service, unless you or your staff is rude in person, but that’s another story. Good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Many people do not realize this, but all across the nation the rooms that we associate with the modern business – the rooms in which the work that keeps the company up and running is done, where computers and physical files are kept and where the majority of the work force in industrialized countries are employed – are shrinking.

That is only half of the picture. This means that we are now going to have more office workers crammed into smaller offices. More individual jobs are also expected to come into existence over the next five years.

Another new and increasing tendency of managers today is to assign parts of their projects to employees while expecting them to do those parts elsewhere and/or not in the workplace, as well as an increase of “teleworking,” whereby individuals do the required work in their own places of residence. Work-at-home jobs are swiftly rising in demand among employees, thanks to the convenience, comfort and ease that usually comes with working at home. There is also a rapid development of “space on demand” and “third places” such as co-working. All of these factors are combining to further this trend towards more office employees in smaller and smaller workplaces.

Beyond those, there is also the factor of virtual offices to consider. Companies now can hire people to answer calls, send emails, and do work without requiring them to be physically present. There are many requests on job websites for ‘virtual assistants’ who work from home, sometimes without ever actually meeting their employer in person. The emergence of programs like Skype, not to mention the ever-increasing use of smartphones, allows employers a wide variety of methods and ways to communicate with workers, thereby lessening the need for face to face interaction.

The business world and typical office are both changing. Don’t fight it.