Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Music On Hold Message-ID: <13137@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 8 Oct 90 01:02:46 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 60 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 720, Message 4 of 7 On Oct 7 at 16:05, Brian Kantor writes: > It was clear to me that the $25 a month for a real person (i.e., an > answering service) more than paid for itself in the number of jobs I > got. Fooey on whizz-bang technology: people want to talk to people, > not machines. And where, oh where, pray tell, do you find this magical answering service? I have been in business for two decades selling and now designing (and selling) equipment and have completely given up on answering services. Unfortunately, I am not, at present, large enough to have a full-time secretary and so I must resort to mechanical means since I am frequently out (and almost never go into the office). Answering services? Phooey! The high turnover morons can't spell to save their lives. They transpose digits in phone numbers. They, themselves, put people on hold forever. "Announcementtechnologiescanyouhold?" And that's after about fifteen rings. And heaven help the customer who actually thinks that he is talking to a bona fide human and starts talking TECHNICAL! (Those messages usually ended up in the service's File 13.) Checking for messages is a real treat. "This is 505, do have any messages?" "Oh yes, Mr. Higdon, quite a few -- oh could you hold please?" [long wait] "Oh, sorry to keep you waiting. Let's see ... An urgent call from a Mr. [unintelligible] who says that your space in San Francisco ... Oh, excuse me just a moment." [long wait] "Sorry. Let's see ... You got the first message..." "No, I didn't understand the name." "Oh, it was ... hold on please." And on and on. Mind you this isn't one service, but the SOP for every one of the six or so services that I tried. And another thing: It wasn't $25/month. It was more like $120-$150 per month. If the morons were underpaid, then someone was getting very rich. You can keep answering services. I (and I'm sure my customers) would rather speak into a mechanical contrivance any day of the week rather than be faced with an over-priced answering service bimbo from hell. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: There are good answering services. Twenty years ago I used one for quite awhile: Annex Telephone Answering, downtown in the Chicago Temple Building. They were good, and they offered flat rate service which as I recall was $35 per month. That included paging me to 'call the office' when they had a message. This wa a bridged service, i.e. they had an extension of my line which came up on their board. Whether or not an answering machine/voicemail is preferable to an answering service depends on the nature of the business and the temperment of the caller. A physician, psychiatrist or social worker might be better off with a live, trained person at an answering service specializing in that sort of client. Annex carried a lot of professional clients; they opened for business about 1920. PAT]