ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion Cell Phones

If you don't answer your phone, you lose business. Until I had full time office help, I forward my calls to the cell. If you're too busy to answer, let it go to voice mail and call back a few minutes later. It's been my experience that once you talk to a customer, they will wait a week for you to do the work, but if they can't get in touch with you immediately, they will call someone else.

[This message has been edited by Electric Eagle (edited 12-24-2004).]

Dave,

I have an office number forwarded to my cell phone. I wish I could eliminate all the telemarketers tring to sell me junk. We have more than one number so we get more than our share of telemarketers. If the number comes up unknown or out of the area I let it go to voice mail.

With the Nextel service is hit and miss. My office is in a cell phone black hole. So I turn off the forwarding when I'm around the desk. Trouble is I forget to switch it back and forth. Yesterday I was in the office and forgot to turn off the forwarding when I got a new lead calling about a large job. I got to the part about he would send the prints for us to bid when the phone 1/2 cut out. I could hear him but he could not hear me. "What's your address, hello, hello, are you still there?" We didn't have voice mail for the office phone because it's allways forwarding to the cell. So I didn't like to leave off the forwarding when I'm not around. But we just fixed that by signing up for voic email on the office.

If you get call forwarding you might want to ask about some kind of unlimited local long distance calling because you'll be charged for every forwarded call from your office to the cell phone company.

I seen a guy had a booster antenia on his truck. Did not conect to the phone at all and he said it did nothing. The do have amps and antenias you can plug into your phone.

I got a call from a local call center wanting to answer our phones. I did not get a price but I might look into it.

Tom

I had an answering service in the early years. The problems I had are as follows:

1. With any forwarding there can be an odd delay, as in ring...ring...... .....ring...ring. What you can get is a "double-space" between rings.
2. I was continuously training the answering service people how I wanted my call answered. It was a rapid turn-over job.
3. As they got busier my calls would get put on hold. Not quite the service I was looking for.

What I'm considering now for the next few weeks is leaving my cell number on my answering machine (as in...I'm on the job, call my cell or leave a message). Then they have the option of calling the cell, leaving a message, or both.

I looked at new cell phones yesterday and you can plug a better antenna into them. They all have a port at the base of the antenna. You might try that in the truck or office.

Dave

LK good point. I don't get work through advertising or from "strangers", nor do I need the extra work. So an answering machine does the trick for me. I am very selective with my cell #.

I have a cell phone that "expires" soon, so I'm giving it out on my answering machine as an axperiment. If I get a lot of sales calls I may keep the new number a secret. The rest of the family has Verizon, so I'll probably get that because we can talk to each other "free".

Dave

Dave, I put my cell phone number on my answering machine but included in the message that only customers were to use it. The sales people honored it, probably because they know I would be short with them.
Ron

Great idea, Ron.
Thanks.

Dave

I still carry around a digital pager and give that number out to everbody. I also have a cell phone but only use it return calls after I get paged. This way I can return calls that I want to , and ignore the ones I think are going to be time waster's (like from the wife....)

Even if you don't give out your cell # some people save it off the caller ID when you call them.