When we started out, we got the phone number 277-FAST and published it
everywhere. It was a land-based line with call forwarding that forwarded
to my cell phone. If I needed to be out of town, or needed a day off, we
would forward it to my brother's phone. When I called back customers,
they would get my cell number on their callerid, and a lot of people
have it, but most know to call the main number for most things. That was
how it was for the first two years. 24 hrs a day, and the voicemail full
constantly. Cost: Business land line with call forwarding ($40/mo) and a
2500 minute cell plan with Sprint ($125/mo)
After a while, I hired the services of my friend at answer360.com, where
he hosts an auto-attendant. Press 1 for sales, 2 for accounting, or 3
for service. My brother takes the first two menu items, and I take the
3rd. After 9:00pm, they go to voicemail (that gets converted to WAV
format and emailed to us) Thats been going on for almost two years. (add
$40/mo). If a customer loses internet after 9:00 and blows a gasket, I
will usually give them my direct cell number and tell him to call me any
time. Making the customer think that you care usually gets them to calm
down. Most customers are willing to deal with next business day service.
Now going into our 4th year, we recently rented an office, and hired an
office manager/secretary. We moved the line to that office, and put on
call-forward busy/call forward no answer, and call transfer/disconnect
services. If Shellie doesn't answer in 3 rings, the auto attendant gets
it and fowards to me or J.D. (add $400/mo rent, $1500/mo salary, and
$15/mo for additional phone services) Shellie does much more than just
answer the phone. She also assembles CPE kits, tests CPE that have been
pulled from the field, orders stuff, schedules installs, service calls,
maintains the filing, handles the petty cash, maintains the calendar,
and listens to the whiners. She may hand me a list of 5 people who
called with "slow connectivity" If they are all on the same AP, I will
reboot it, or check to see if there is an out of control P2P'er on that
AP deal with it, and then call them back (or have Shellie call them
back) to confirm that the problem is solved. That beats 5 separate
incoming calls by a long shot. If/when we are going AP maintenance, and
there is an outage for 30 minutes, she can tell all of the callers that
it will be back up by 4:00p, and my phone doesn't ring. This concept has
been working actually rather well.
Pete Davis
NoDial.net
George Rogato wrote:
Not applicable, I've been the on-call guy for three and a half years
straight. :)
David Smith
MVN.net
I actually give out my cell phone number to my broadband subs so they
can call me if they are out.
I just recently started doing this. We don't have 24/7 tech support.
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