Hi

I have been asked mulitple times why a techie like myself still uses an answering service and a pager.  In the early days as I built my business, I used a voice mail system that would page my pager when there was a call.  This system worked well for many years. 

What I finally realized was that if someone was in the office answering the telephones that potential clients would call.  If no one was in the office and the calls went to voice mail, there were very few potential clients calling.  I finally realized that potential clients, in general, were not leaving messages on the voice mail.

Think about it, if you call a new business that you have never done business with and you get voice mail, do you leave a message?  In most cases, the answer is no, you do not leave a message.  The reason that we don’t leave is message on the voice mail is that we have all learned that if we leave a message, the call is almost never returned.  If the call is returned at all, it is usually days later.  So if you won’t leave a message on a voice mail system, what makes you think that potential clients will leave messages on your voice mail system?  Still don’t believe me? If you have caller id, check the caller ID numbers against your voice mail and you will be surprised.

I changed to an answering service and now potential clients are calling when no one is in the office.  There is an additional advantage to using an answering service and that is that the answering service has the ability to not only take a message, but they can call a designated cell phone if there is an emergency.  This solves the problem of tracking who has the tech’s cell phone number or who is on call for after hours emergencies.

To make life easy for clients that want to contact us, we only give out one telephone number (703-359-9211).  That number is answered by the office, if someone is in the office, or by a live body at the answering service 24 hours 7 days a week.  If the call is an emergency, then the answering service will call the designated on-call tech with the call.  Clients don’t have to keep track of day/night hours or cell phone numbers or who the on-call tech is.

Howard Cunningham

www.macrollc.com