Text-Em-All
By interacting with customers frequently, we often receive similar questions about what our service has the capacity to do. We enjoy helping customers or potential customers because we are always here to help, and that will never change!
The two questions which we tend to field a lot is "Do you have a 'Press 1 Campaign/Functionality' where the recipient can be transferred back to our number?" or "Can my voice broadcast recipient leave me a message?". The direct answer to these questions is "no", however, it isn't just as simple as no, it is more of a "no, but...".
The reason we don't offer a the "Press 1" functionality is that with large calls, no matter the size of the corporation, organization, or individual, it is impossible for someone to be prepared to receive the wanted feedback. We send out roughly 2,500 calls per minute, so imagine what would happen if everyone started calling at once! Not only would it be overwhelming, but it could be stressful and unprofessional. Our goal is to provide not only a good experience with our customers, but also to those individuals which are receiving calls from us. We simply do not want our customers to miss out on opportunities because they cannot answer all the calls they are receiving and likewise, we do not want the broadcast recipients to get a busy signal, a line condition error, or to sit on hold. Also, simplicity is the key here at Call-Em-All with our service and with our pricing. We don't have any gimmicks or contracts, and we don’t want to charge you for every minute that someone is on the line with you after transferring.
The reason we don't offer the option to leave a message is that we just aren't in the market of being a voicemail provider. Our main goal is to continue to successfully build our core product of delivering voice/text messages to your contacts in a fashion that is easy to do and quick to execute.
When I'm talking with a call service customer who asks those questions I find myself saying "no, but let me recommend our survey broadcast option". The survey feature allows the broadcast recipient to press *1-9 and we'll record that and present it in the broadcast details for each number. A sample message could be:
"Thank you for your attendance to last weeks conference. We'd like your feedback on it. Please press *1 if you enjoyed the event or *2 if you were dissatisfied. Thank you and see you next year"
If that message was sent to 100 people, it is as easy to see on the details report who was dissatisfied and call them to follow-up. This is a great way to get a response, without having to have them call you back and flood your phone.
But what if you wanted to get specific information about why they thought the conference was bad? Well, we had a great discussion with one of our customers who began using Google Voice as a way to better handle call volume following a voice broadcast. Check out the video below for Google's explanation of Google Voice.
Google Voice has some great features as you saw in the video, but how does it tie into using Call-Em-All?
- First, instead of using your home/cell number use your Google Voice number that you setup. This way you now have a system in place to manage call backs when you have a large list or know you won't be able to answer the phone but would like to follow along as messages are left.
- Let's go back to the conference attendance example I stated previously. Now the message could be
"Thank you for your attendance to last weeks conference. We'd like your feedback on it. Please press *1 if you enjoyed the event or *2 if you were dissatisfied. If you would like to give us some more specific feedback please call {Google Voice No.}. Thanks and hope to see you next year".
If you sent that call to 1000 conference attendees and 10% wanted to call you, your phone(s) would be going crazy. But with Google Voice, you can answer at your pace follow along as messages are made. If you see some that are particularly poor, you could follow-up with them immediately.
- Here is an interesting example of creating your own "Call Center". With Google Voice you can setup call forwarding. You can specify many numbers which will all ring waiting for someone to pick up (I'm not sure of a limit to how many number you can setup). What this allows you to do is have fellow employees, organization members or anyone that can field the calls available through their home/cell phone. Now, not only does Google Voice allow you to alleviate some of the burden of numerous callbacks, but now it alls you to also spread some that to others that are able to help.
Those are only a few scenarios which you can use Call-Em-All and Google Voice. Let us know in the comments if you are using Google Voice or another system in conjunction with your Call-Em-All calls/texts. We love hearing how our customers innovate to their needs!
sitenote: We aren't supporting the use of Google Voice, only offering it up as a potential option. Google offers well written documentation and easy to follow videos regarding Google Voice. You can see all their videos at their YouTube Channel. Also, a Google Account is required. More details can be seen by going to http://voice.google.com.