Using a Call Announce for After Hours Urgent Support Calls

Many small offices have their calls forwarded to a cell phone or home phone after hours so a caller can reach their physician, insurance agent, IT support, plumber or another person. There are a couple of problems in sending a call directly to a phone that is outside of the office:

The employee who answers the call may not know that the call is for business until they answer.If the employee does not answer then the caller may leave a voice message on that persons personal voice mail.If the caller is expecting a quick response after leaving a voice message the cell phone or home phone voice mail will not be proactive in reaching someone to respond.

The Call Announce feature will solve all of these issues. Call Announce greets the caller with a professional greeting and places them on hold. They listen to music as a call to the staff person is placed. When that person answers the call the Call Announce tells the them

"This is a call for (name of the business here). Press one to be connected or press two to send the caller to voice mail."

This simple alert allows the staff person to know how to answer the call and if they are not in a situation where they can take a business call they have the option to not be connected.

If the staff person elects not to be connected they can just hang up OR if the call goes to the cell phone voice mail the Call Announce system can continue to another person's cell phone in the "hunt" sequence.
They can also elect to send the caller to voice mail by pressing two. This will bypass any other phones in the rest of the "hunt" sequence.

A system including Call Announce can be used in several scenarios. One is for a company who has several IT support technicians that take urgent after hours calls. Using Call Announce, the phone system tries to connect the caller with up to 6 different technicians. The caller listens to music as the system dials each technicians phone.

The best part is that even if the call eventually goes to voice mail (if all of the technicians can't take the call live) then the system can elevate the response to management with proactive voice mail deliveries. No longer does a client leave a voice message on a cell phone that may not get a response in a timely manner.

Call Announce solves many issues in routing calls to phones outside the office directly.

Greg Standerfer is a phone consultant for small business owners and owner of All Call Technologies.
For more information on Call Announce and other voice services for small offices visit Virtual Phone Systems or call 877-659-4999

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