Why it pays to have test voice-mail
Back in 2005, I was working for a start-up that had a traditional punch-key PBX system. It wasn’t the fault of the start-up, it was just the phone system that the commercial office space they occupied came with. The manual for the phone system that the previous tenant (another start-up) had left behind looked like a mini-yellow pages. It became the IT Director’s new part-time job to figure out the new branches and extensions for each employee, as well as set up voicemail boxes for each. And one could commonly hear, “how do you transfer a call again?” or “I’m going to try and transfer you, but if I lose you then call….” Visual voice-mail was considered an exotic luxury back then.
But like most start-ups, we were short on time and patience, and we went ahead and used our phones as was, accepting the small shortcomings of our punch-key system as just tiny nuisances in the daily grind of business.
One day as the marketing manager, I got the bright (OK, obvious) idea to try calling our support and sales numbers individually at night, just to see how quickly each got back to me. I called the numbers listed on our website (our support had a local DID number; our sales line had a toll free) and waited to see what happened.
Support got back to me the next day, sales never did. A couple of attempts later and I realized that voice-mail messages left for the sales team after-hours were not being received by anyone. Speaking with the IT Director (who liked dealing with the phone system as much as a hernia), he explained to me that daytime calls to our inbound toll free number had a “PBX hunt-group” effect instead of more intelligent call routing, so it would just rotate inbound calls from desk to desk until someone picked up the call. After a number of rings it would default to a voice-mail box, but no one thought to check that voice-mail box, because none of the sales reps knew it existed. And none had thought to ask themselves (or the IT Director) what happened if someone called after hours.
When we figured out which voicemail box the after-hours messages to our sales department were going to, we discovered over 200 messages by potential customers going back as far as 3 months. These people never got called back, and most of them never entered our sales pipeline. In the era where most businesses cannot afford to lose potential customers, it’s a mystery to me why more people don’t check this phone function more routinely. All one needs to do is call the numbers listed publicly for the company and say, “This is _____ conducting an internal test on our phone systems. Can the person that gets this voicemail message e-mail me at _____ or call me at ____? Thanks!”
You never know what you’re going to discover.
Photo by Glen Bowman
Important people have… people. The president doesn’t have a cell phone; he has people nearby him who do.
The cliché executives in movies always have an administrator desked outside their door waiting to sniff out your legitimacy and guard their time and impress their constituants. Jennifer Lopez cavorts around town with twenty assistants.
HBO has a hit series called Entourage. The social message of an entourage is clear–respect me.
People with the wherewithal to organize others to support their causes and endeavors garner our respect almost instantly. In ancient times, leaders never walked, but were always carried by an entourage of their staff. When you meet an important person, you rarely meet them first–you meet their people.
Adding a professionally recorded voice mail and auto attendant greeting to your companies’ phone system conveys the same message virtually. Professionally created voice mail greetings are done by skilled radio and advertising voiceover professionals from a custom script tailored to your business. This virtual entourage creates much of the same affect in your prospects and customers. “Wow, they have people!”
In today’s digital world, it’s inexpensive to have virtual people, but the psycological affect can be much the same as the respect we give to a well-dressed leader walking down the street surrounded on all sides with eager assistants.
Most people are familiar with vanity phone numbers; a number that spells out a certain phrase or even your company name. This is commonly called a “phoneword” and is the alphanumeric equivalent of a telephone number.
Vanity phone numbers are more advantageous than standard numbers because they are more memorable and also give you another area where you can expand your brand.
In the past 10-20 years, they have also become prevalent in pop culture from commercials to use in sitcoms. And, as we all know, if something techie is popular in a sitcom, then it has already become popular with the cool tech crowd.
Scrubs
One of the best uses of a vanity number in recent memory is on the show Scrubs. In it, Donald Faison’s character, Dr. Chris Turk, managed to get 916-CALL-TURK.
Turk: J.D., big news! Guess what my new cell phone number spells!
J.D.: Why’d you get a new cell phone number? Your old number spelled “kufunninapuh.”
Turk: Yeah, well this one’s 916-CALL-TURK. Yeah, so now all you gotta do is call Turk!
J.D.: How’m I supposed to remember that? I’m begging you, stick with “kufunninapuh”!
Turk: Come on, man, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me besides getting married.
J.D.: She’s not here.
Turk: It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me!
J.D.: But “CALL-TURK” is eight numbers.
Turk: I know, actually it’s just CALL-TUR, but I’m hoping people will dial the “K” anyway.
J.D.: I’ll always dial the “K” for you.
Instead of using the standard 555 number that television uses to keep real numbers from being abused by TV watchers, the producers of the show actually purchased the number. When called, a recording would thank fans for watching. If you were lucky and a cast member was nearby, they would pick up the phone and talk to you.
It was a great way to reach out to fans and help brand the show. However, the number is no longer in service. I suspect that when the show moved to ABC, NBC turned it off.
(Yes, it’s in German, but that kinda makes it funnier.)
Something interesting to note here that most people don’t realize is that a vanity number doesn’t have to be a toll free number. Obviously, if you want to reach customers outside of your area code, you should consider a toll free number, but if you aren’t worried about that limitation, then you have 3 more numbers to use with your catch phrase.
MY BOYS
TBS created a commercial using one of the characters from My Boys and a vanity number: 1-800-TBS-FUNNY.
Not only does it help advertise the show, but it also helps to create a clever marketing gag for the station.
Sadly, nobody picked up the phone when I tried calling it, but it was a real phone number. I am surprised that they do not have an auto attendant to deal with any calls. Maybe they should take note of what Scrubs was doing.
PhoneSpell
Ever been curious what your number might spell? The majority of our numbers aren’t going to spell anything that is memorable, but every once in awhile, something neat will come up. I went to PhoneSpell and put in my home number and cell phone with and without area code. Nothing really cool came up except for the cell phone without the area code. (And in the interest of not wanting to be plagued by phone calls, I won’t post that here. 
) You can also put in your phoneword and it will give you the resulting number. (In case you didn’t want to try to do the “math” in your head while looking at a phone.)
Once you have the number in mind, head on over to RingCentral to get it set up. You can check and see if the toll free number is available first making things very flexible and giving you the chance to make changes if someone already has it. (Plus, it means that you don’t need to call the number to see if it is taken.)
Have a specific local number in mind? Let RingCentral help you with that too. Just call sales at 800-574-5290 and they can look into your vanity phone number and find out what’s available.
A vanity number can be a great resource for your company, website and sales team. Wouldn’t you like for people to be able to call you by just remembering a word or two?
The “call to action” is a vital part of any marketing campaign. The whole point is to get potential customers to transform into actual customers by contacting you. Once they do, however, what happens? People will not jump through hoops or fight to give you their business, certainly not so long as your competition is bending over backwards to make the sale. You need to take your customers by the hand and make things as easy as possible.
Unfortunately, customers have the habit of not always calling when you’re sitting by your phone. If you’re not there, what do they hear? According to the North American Telecommunications Association, callers who hear silence stay on the line an average of only 40 seconds. If you replace that silence with a spoken message, that average leaps to three minutes.
While a professional greeting is a great start, nothing beats actually getting that customer talking to a real, live human being. Even if you can’t have a person always by the phone, modern auto attendants can prevent callers from feeling neglected or ignored by connecting them to the right people in your organization. And when that person isn’t available, leaving a message in an individual person’s voicemail imparts more confidence than a generic company-wide voicemail.
Once you’re talking to customers and closing the deal, it’s time to take an eagle’s-eye view of the situation. Who is calling? Where are they calling from? Who are they talking to? If your phone system can’t capture this data, you can’t know exactly what sort of return you’re getting for your marketing efforts. Even customers who don’t stay on the line or complete the sale with you can let you know who is responding to your marketing with interest in your products or services.
Photo credits: Sorosh, Daquella manera.