Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: John Higdon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Customer Support Message-ID: <2876@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 13 Jan 90 11:42:03 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 82 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 27, message 4 of 9 Randal Schwartz 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 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 !