Phone is blowing up... but

99% of the time it is a hangup robo call! Its out of control and extremely frustrating! Another toothless, unenforceable law. It used to be easy to identify because it would be in State, but from out of town, and I’d reject the number. If it was important they would leave a message. Now, they are using in town numbers, which could be customers. Its to the point that I don’t want to answer the damn phone and if its a customer they can leave a message.The other day I rejected a Florida number, figuring it was garbage and it was a potential local customer with an out of State number with 75 windows in her house. I haven’t been able to get back in touch with her.

Most of the time I call back immediately and “the number has been disconnected” so I block them, but that doesn’t really help since they rarely use the same number. This is probably my #1 frustration. Who has time for this shit!

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Download the TrueCaller app. It will filter known spammers. Unfortunately you will still get calls from spammers that spoof their number. Every service business owner should have that app

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we have the same issue here. it is extremely frustrating

Thanks! I downloaded it. Hopefully it helps.

Are people using cell phones for their primary business number?

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i do

I have my business phone forwarded to my cell.

are people not?

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I understand your frustration. I used to deal with salespeople calling all the time. Now I never answer my phone if I don’t recognize the phone number. They will leave a message if it is important. If they don’t leave a message I immediately block that phone number. This has helped tremendously. I maybe get 2 sales calls a week now.

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So far so good with the app.

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I would never use my cellphone as a primary business phone number.

You’ll easily outgrow that number and then need to change numbers which is not good.

I see it as a disadvantage of taking customer calls while I am washing windows.

why would you out grow it?

Really? You don’t honestly know the answer to that?

i know lot’s of answers. but no good ones.

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I have quite a few numbers from businesses I bought. They all forward to a business cell phone, which usually forwards to my iPhone with the truecaller app. I can disconnect the forward and give the business cell phone to my temporary office assistant when I go on vacation. Eventually I’ll have a full time office person to handle all the calls

After 8 years in business I figured out a way to get rid of robocallers. I’ll make a video sometime this week :slight_smile:

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I know of a few. But the most important refers to growth of a company.

A solo guy isn’t going to need an office manager or a front desk person/secretary. Cell phones don’t work well for that kind of situation nor are they as reliable as a land line, when you grow to a point you have an office.

I agree with @anon46335951 that cell phones don’t work and are a bad plan for an office. A company that grows to several trucks/crews, should have started with a landline in the beginning. How hard on your business would it be on you, if you had to change your phone number today?

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Ok, I’ll just type it.

Get a RingCentral account. Have all your public facing numbers forward to it. If you are using your cell phone number as a business number, change it to a Ringcentral, Google Voice or Callfire number.

Set up 2 mailboxes -

One for sales, one for “Other Inquiries”

Sales should wither go to a voicemail or patch through to you (press 1)

Other Inquiries (press 2) should go to a voicemail only. In that voicemail message state that “We don’t do business with telephone solicitors of any kind. If you are a solicitor, please hang up now.”

Set your main extension (Where you are given extension options) should be set to replay menu options when 0 is pressed. Do not set up a voicemail on the main extension.


What happens here…

Legit telemarketers don’t want to talk to the sales department, so they’ll press 2 for other inquiries. When they press 2, the greeting basically states that they are entering a hostile environment, and they won’t leave a voicemail.

Robocallers are not able to “press 1” to continue to your sales department. They will simply start talking when they detect that someone picked up the phone. If there’s no voicemail set, and the menu options repeat themselves, the robots basically spend their time talking to your menu options greeting.

We went from 10-20 robo and sales calls a day to 1 or 2 getting through per month. It is a HUGELY successful way of getting rid of them. I wish I had implemented this years ago, as telemarketers were the bane of my existence and the scum of the earth, IMO.

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if you start with a cell phone and you grow to the point that you need somebody else to answer the phone for you all you have to do is have the cell phone forward to their number whether that be a landline or whatever. It adds no difficulty to the running of a larger business.

having your business run off of a cell phone number has a lot of flexibility and also speaks to the fact that you’re not stuck in the past.

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Must be A LOT different where you are then.

Here, cell phones, no matter the carrier, are not 100% dependable. Maybe 75%-85%. I get voice mails often when I never got a call. How many times has a potential client called, and never left a message? Service gets temporarily knocked out (for various reasons) all the time.
I also don’t know of any businesses here who have a store front, that don’t have a landline.

Call forwarding won’t work when someone sends you a text to a land line…

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