This is part one in a two-part series about the many benefits of the Follow Me services for businesses and service providers of all sizes.
We’ve talked before about the Follow Me service, which can be used as a standalone, as well as with other answering services.
You’re in charge with Follow Me. Follow Me, also referred to as “Find Me/Follow Me,” is a simple and flexible – yet incredibly powerful – tool that allows you to configure exactly where you want your calls to go and when. Even better, you can edit and re-configure your rules as much and as often as you like, based on the time of day, the day of the week, the time of year or any other parameters related to your life in and out of the office.
Interested in how Follow Me works for real-life clients?
You have an A/C or appliance repair service with multiple phones ringing at once. You get many emergency calls, at all hours of the day or night, with callers wanting instant service and minimal response time. A caller dials your phone number (which can be one virtual number, a 1-800/toll-free number or any other number you choose to publicize as your “main” number). Because you are out and about on the road, often between your work and home, and your customers’ homes and offices as well, you want all of your phones – cell, home, office – to simultaneously ring so that you can easily and quickly pick up wherever you are located with minimal wait time for the caller. This way, you don’t have to predict where you will be when – let the system find you wherever you are and your callers will have their calls answered immediately.
You are a medical practice with different on-call practitioners at different times and on different days. Depending on the details that you set, including who is on-call when, you set a specific hierarchy for which phones ring where and in what order. This is often known as a process of “sequential” rings. For instance, if it is the second Saturday of the month, you configure the order of ringing calls to first ring at the home of the practitioner on call. Next, if there is no answer, perhaps it will ring at that same practitioner’s cell phone. If still no answer, it will next ring at the home and/or cell phone of the backup on-call person. Finally, if no phones within the set configuration are picked up, the call will be routed to voicemail without further delay.
Read more real-world examples of how Follow Me is used by businesses and service providers of all sizes here in part two.
