Grow Your Company Even More

I'm running into a problem with my growing window washing business. The phone has been ringing off the hook with new clients, which is great. However, when I started, I was giving out my personal cell number to people.

Then I put a business cell number on my early business cards. As things went on, I got a partner to handle the scheduling and we gave out his number. Then when he got too busy we hired someone to do scheduling with their own phone.

In short, there are four or five numbers someone might call to book an appointment, and I'm worried clients are going to slip through the cracks or we're going to get double-booked. Any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks!

There's a ton eVoice can do, but I'm going to focus on three things that deal specifically with your situation. Then I'll tell you how it can help you grow your company even more.

1. INDEPENDENT BUSINESS NUMBERS
The basic eVoice plans allows you to create up to six numbers and two extensions. These can be random local numbers, local numbers you transfer from another phone or 800 numbers.

Then simply add your four phones to the eVoice account. When people ring an eVoice number, the call can go to your phones. As you change phones and add employees, simply add and remove phones from the eVoice account. The number your clients call will always stay the same.

You can set up a number for your business that never needs to change. It can go on your business cards, ads and wherever else. Or you can create numbers for different parts of the business as it grows.

2. CALL ROUTING
When a call comes in to an eVoice number, you choose where it goes using easy-to-create rules. Have it ring every phone on the account in a certain order, or ring them all at once.

Set days and times when a call should ring one number first, or go right to voice mail. You can change the rules in seconds in your eVoice online account using any browser. That's perfect if someone goes on vacation or you hire a new scheduler.

Have a client that won't stop harassing you, or a VIP client you want to handle personally? You can send certain numbers right to voicemail (or just hang up) or to a specific phone on the account.

3. CALL TRANSFER
The previous features are great for managing your clients going forward, but you still have the problem that a lot of your clients have old numbers. eVoice can help you there with the call transfer feature.

Simply press "9" while on a call and you can send the caller to another phone on your eVoice account, voice mail or any other phone number. In your case, that lets you answer a call and then send the client to your scheduler to "finalize the appointment details."

Then just make it a point at each visit to give your clients an updated contact card with your new eVoice number. After a while, they'll have the right number, and you won't have to worry.

Of course, these are just the tip of the eVoice iceberg. eVoice includes an automated answering service that clients will hear when they call. You can record your own message, or pay eVoice an extra fee to have a professional read a script you write.

There's also a phone tree option that lets you narrow down why a customer is calling. Based on the buttons they press, you can have eVoice route them to specific phones or straight to voice mail.

Speaking of voice mail, don't you just hate checking messages? You have to keep a pen and paper handy to write down important information, which might be tough on the go. Maybe the person leaves a long message and only gives a rushed callback number at the end, so you have to listen to it again.

That's why eVoice does voice mail transcription. As soon as someone leaves a voice mail, the text transcript shows up in the free eVoice app or in your email. No need to listen to the message; you can read it right away.

Naturally, you get an audio file of the message just in case you want to check something that doesn't make much sense. For really important calls, you can also pay eVoice a little extra to run the automated transcription past a real human to make sure it's completely accurate before you get it.

About LaraNet: We are a web design firm focused to help you to grow your business and communicate with your customers and prospects using two simple but powerful tools: 1) Interactive Website and 2) Internet Marketing Strategy on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc …
Whether you want to work with just a web page, or launch or improve your presence on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or communicate with your customers through newsletters, or improve the location of your business in the search engines through Search Engine Optimization, or start marketing your products or services online, in LaraNet we can help you.

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