levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org (Ken Levitt) (01/12/90)
I am about to embark on a new business venture and money is rather
tight. This venture requires that my partner and I provide an
incredibly high level of customer support for 16 hours a day 7 days a
week. I am seeking telecommunications solutions to this problem.
The following items are givens:
1. 80 percent of the calls will be answered by either myself or my
partner and will not need special processing.
2. Telling customers that "If you can't reach us, to call my beeper
number", is not acceptable from a corporate image point of view.
3. We can not afford to hire an employee to help with the support.
4. We can not always be here to answer the phone.
5. 98 percent of the time a client should be able to talk with us
within 15 minutes of their call.
6. We can not be calling in to an answering machine every 15
minutes to see if anyone has left a message.
I have thought of three possible solutions but I don't know where to
find the equipment for numbers 2 and 3.
1. Hire an answering service. Either tell them where I can be reached
at all times or get a beeper and tell them to beep me if any calls
come in. This seems like an expensive solution, but it should work.
2. Have a call forwarding device that would answer on one line and call
out to me on another line. In order for this to work, I would have
to be able to re-program the forwarding number remotely. I don't
think New England Telephone offers a service like this. (do they?)
3. I understand that there is a type of answering machine that will
take a message and then call some other number (like a beeper)
to inform you that you have a message waiting.
If anyone has any additional ideas or can tell me how to locate
devices listed in #2 and #3 above, I would like to hear from you.
Please contact me directly. If there are any interesting solutions, I
will post them to the Digest.
Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390
UUCP: zorro9!levitt
INTERNET: levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edJohn Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> (01/13/90)
Randal Schwartz <merlyn@iwarp.intel.com> writes: > It's called a "cellular phone". I use a portable cell phone *all* the > time (for the last 18 months) to do exactly what you asked for. But I have a portable phone as well. And unless you keep that phone on *all* the time and can guarantee that it will not be out of range or in a coverage hole, you will put some of your customers off, big time. Getting the "I'm sorry, the cellular customer you are trying to reach..." recording is an instant tip off that you are running the business out of your car. A possible solution is to invoke "no answer forwarding" which is available from some providers, but then you have to forward that call *somewhere*. > most of the time, I'm not paying airtime rates, because I have > forwarded the call to a landline that I happen to be at. Well, if you forward a cellular phone on most systems, you pay airtime for the call regardless where the forward actually terminates. > I also happen to live in an area > where prime-time charges are only $0.31/min, and call-forwarded calls > are only $0.07/min on a $15/month fee. (Apparently, that's pretty > low.) You're damn right that's pretty low. Try $39/mo and $0.45/min as is the case here. And then Dave Levenson <dave%westmark@uunet.uu.net> writes: > I have been involved in a business with similar customer-support > requirements, for several years. We have a business number which is > covered by a full-time answering service. They have the beeper > numbers and mobile phone numbers of the customer-contact people. > The number also rings in my residence. I have been involved with business ownership ranging from sole propritorship to a corporation employing twenty people, always service oriented. I have had terrible luck with answering services. First, they have tremendous turnover, and are usually understaffed. Customers wait on hold, or are put on hold numerous times during the conversation. The mentally deficient people that answer the calls can't spell or even hear properly. I recall getting paged repeatedly when the call was for someone else, or when some salesman called, or even, as I mentioned before, over a wrong number. I made a routine call to the service only to find that one of my biggest customers had been off the air for over four hours. They weren't sure whether they should page me or not! I have been paged and then called in and put on hold so many times that I finally gave up. It goes on and on. Repeated talks with the supervisor netted most sincere apologies and promises for improvement, and then it would start all over. "But sir, we have such a turnover that it's hard to keep trained people." My customers would invariably complain about the answering service (with justification). The field has consisted of three "computerized" services, and one no-nonsense cordboard (direct connection) service. It was all terrible. > I tried an answering machine with automatic outcalling > message-notification features. It works, technically, but suffers > from the ills that plague a lot of answering machines...people don't > like to reach it, and often don't leave readable messages. (A high > percentage of our callers speak English as a poor second language.) > The human being at the answering service is a whole lot better at > prompting an intelligible message out of most callers! Interesting, but my experience has been exactly the opposite. My customers have been much happier interacting with my Watson. It is predictable, dependable, and the bottom line is that they reach me much more reliably. The "human beings" at the answering service would have had difficulty being intelligible themselves, much less prompting anything from anyone. When a customer would try to leave an even slightly technical message, the result after being filtered through an answering service pea brain was most humorous. With the Watson, the caller says his piece and hangs up, confident that his message will be delivered verbatim, rather than mangled beyond all recognition. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
Paul Guthrie <pdg@chinet.chi.il.us> (01/14/90)
In article <2828@accuvax.nwu.edu> levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org (Ken Levitt) writes: >I am about to embark on a new business venture and money is rather >tight. This venture requires that my partner and I provide an >incredibly high level of customer support for 16 hours a day 7 days a >week. I am seeking telecommunications solutions to this problem. Get a PC with some sort of voice mail board (watson, dialogic, etc). Have it take the call, and then beep you (easy to program). This solution worked for me for quite a while. Paul Guthrie chinet!nsacray!paul
carrato@mhinfo.UUCP ( tony carrato) (01/14/90)
In article <2828@accuvax.nwu.edu> levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org (Ken Levitt) writes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 24, message 12 of 12 >I am about to embark on a new business venture and money is rather >tight. This venture requires that my partner and I provide an >incredibly high level of customer support for 16 hours a day 7 days a >week. I am seeking telecommunications solutions to this problem. ... bulk of inquiry deleted but what it asks is how to get a call without knowing where you might be at the time... Two solutions come to my mind, one that I use and one that one of the folks here uses. 1) There are getting to be a number of voice mail services out that will also page you. On your voice mailbox you can leave a greeting that instructs the caller to leave you a detailed problem report and tells him that you'll call back shortly. My experience is that you get paged withing 5 minutes of the call depending on congestion at the voice mail services (their computer and phone system mostly). 2) Get a portable, cellular phone and forward your office number to that. As long as you are in range you will get the call immediately. Naturally this assumes you are available to answer it at all times but you can probably get that phone to forward to voice mail if you don't answer in four rings. Tony Carrato Mile-High Information Services, Inc. uunet!mhinfo!carrato
Ken Levitt <levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org> (01/16/90)
I received a lot of traffic on my customer support posting. Here is a
summary of responses.
90% if the responses and people that I have talked to seem to think
that answering services should be avoided at all costs. The list of
horror stories could fill an entire digest.
Sony, Panasonic and Phone Mate make answering machines that will call
another number to indicate that a message has come in.
Radio Shack and STARTEL have machines that will do call forwarding if
you have two lines.
You can subscribe to a voice mail service that will activate a beeper
when a message come in.
Many people have recommended using a PC based voice mail system.
After considering all of the above options, the one that seems worth
doing for me seems to be the PC based voice mail system. (since I
have an old PC clone that I'm not using now for anything else.)
I believe that my requirements are as follows:
1. Runs on dedicated 8mhz XT clone with 20mb (slow) hard disk.
2. Can call out to a beeper number.
3. Has good voice quality.
4. Allows calling in to pick up messages
5. Allows me to call in remotely and alter programming to some other
pre-defined program.
6. Allows callers to specify the priority or disposition of a call by
pressing a number on a Touch-Tone phone.
7. Security code for remote operations.
8. Costs under $1000 for all hardware & software excluding the PC.
9. Can answer a call on one line and forward it out on a second line.
10. Able to do different things based on the time of day.
Items 1-8 are absolute requirements. Items 9-10 are highly desireable.
I have been told that the Watson system will do all of this.
Jeff Cochran reported having both the Watson and "The Complete PC".
He reports the Watson is far superior.
Mark Earle recommended "The Complete Answering Machine". Is this the
same as "The Complete PC"?
I've also been told about a product called BigMouth.
If anyone has other devices to add to the list or experiences with any
of the above devices, please send Email. I will summarize for the
digest. Any information about suppliers having good prices on this
type of equipment would also be greatly appreciated.
Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390
UUCP: zorro9!levitt
INTERNET: levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edu