Why we unplugged our expensive PBX system & bought a $15 answering machine.

I’m sure some people out there might be amazed to learn that the JVM office isn’t VoIP, our number doesn’t ring to our iPhones, and we did indeed unplug the expensive PBX system we had and turn back the clock with a $15 answering machine. I’m sure some people out there are now wondering why a young, hip, technology-savvy company would choose to go all old school on the phone front.

No cells, no Skype, less hype.

We kind of had a grumpy old man moment recently when, for the umpteenth time, a client called us and we found ourselves stating, “I’m sorry, we can’t quite hear you … you must have a really bad connection.” Then we find out they’re either calling using VoIP or Skype. It may be very low cost or even free, but if you can not hear the other person on the call it’s worthless. We just can’t move over to that technology until there’s more of a chance of getting a clear connection on every call.

Regarding cell phones (oops – sorry they’re mobile devices now, right?), they’re usually fine, except when they drop calls. This is pretty much as annoying as not hearing someone. You’re mid way into explaining a work process or something and then it becomes clear that the other end of the phone has gone silent. Next thing you know the call waiting is going off and yup, it’s the client who was just on with you, apologizing that their phone must have dropped the call.

So we still have a land line and a couple of actual telephones (yes, the kind that plug into that funky outlet in the wall). Are we behind the times? Perhaps. Yes it costs more and it’s old tech but it’s important to us to be able to have clear, uninterrupted conversations with our clients. It’s also important to us to actually NOT be accessible 24/7. We may use our iPhones for business when we’re out of the office during business hours, but after hours and weekends they’re not in use because anyone that calls our regular phone number will get the machine.

PBX vs. Answering Machine

When we got the PBX system we thought we were totally in the big leagues. We set up a whole directory system and a lengthy message explaining it all to callers. It was the whole, “push 1 for this … push 2 for that …” and we thought it was so efficient. Well for over a year we used the system and we started to notice a distinct lack of messages left for us. At first we thought it was really working and that people were getting the information they needed by listening to all the instructions and then just not needing to leave us a message. But we started to question it after the months went on and we’d pull maybe 1 or 2 messages off in an entire week. Granted, during regular business hours we endeavor to actually answer the phone before it goes into message mode but when we were going to close the office for a couple of weeks and take a vacation recently I thought it would be a good time for an experiment. So I drove all over town to procure the archaic piece of technology known as a digital answering machine and finally located one at an office supply store for $15. The night before we left I recorded a short message and turned it on.

Keeping in mind that all of our regular and on-going clients knew we were going to be away, we had 43 messages on that answering machine after 2 weeks time. Only 6 were hang ups, so that means that 37 were legit messages left by clients or potential clients. Granted there was no one here taking calls, but there have been days where no one was in the office taking calls and no messages were in the PBX system either. What happened over the 10 working days we were away was an average of 3.7 messages left per day. We weren’t getting any less emails, which leads me to surmise that more callers felt more compelled to leave a message when prompted with a very short greeting and a simple “beep” than when they were when greeted with a lengthy explanation and a, “push 1 for this…” phone tree.

It’s been 2 weeks since we’ve been back in the office now and I’m still testing the theory. When we’re out to lunch or busy with a project or it’s after hours, we let our $15 digital workhorse take the call for us. The first week back there were 7 messages left. So far this week there’s been 5. Still distinctly higher numbers than the previous 1-2 per week.

People still like to make contact by leaving a message, but they hate phone trees. That’s basically what I got out of this on-going experiment.

Old School for the win.

For now, we’re basically going back to the same set up we had 15 years ago when we first started this business – a couple telephones and a digital answering machine. For a small business, the old standards sometimes can’t be beat.

I do have to add that we do also understand the need for PBX systems in large companies. If you have many departments and don’t have a operator or someone manning the phones all day long, that’s the next best thing. But even then I have a feeling that people calling in just go through the motions because they know they have to and would most likely hang up or want to quickly leave a message and have someone call them back if they couldn’t get a live person on the phone. We also understand that systems like Skype do have their place and of course the convenience of being able to do business at any place and any time with a mobile phone, but there’s still choices out there. For now, we’re choosing the things that we feel are best suited to our small business and to our clients.

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