Ooh, shiny!
Ooh, I see great potential in friend abuse here… I was online last week and somehow came across DialMyCalls.com– it is a group calling service that allows you to record a greeting and they send it out over the phone for you. With their free account, you are allowed one mass message per day to up to 25 numbers or with a paid account up to 20,000 phone numbers all within a few minutes. It’s a smart bugger too- it recognizes when a call gets voicemail and doesn’t start saying your message until voicemail can record the whole thing!
It can also email the message to recipients in addition to playing the message back in a phone call, there are several ways to import phone numbers and contact information and they offer call reports for seeing exactly what happened with each one of your calls.
Business Uses for DialMyCalls
- Remind staff of upcoming meetings or changes.
- Notify clients of newly available listings or price changes. You could have a button on your site for people to sign up to be notified via phone (not everyone cares to check back online).
- Let your call list know of any upcoming events- parties, networking events, volunteer opportunities, etc.
- Have a button for people to sign up to hear daily or weekly headlines from your site “on the go” to see if they should rush to the computer.
What other business uses can you see this tool being used for (and please don’t say telemarketer)?
Smarty-pants reasons/ways to use it:
- Groom your telemarketing skills in case the second mortgage tsunami hits.
- Send a daily recording of things the voices inside your head tell you to send to your friends and family.
- Instead of sending jokes via email (like Wonderful Russ), send them over the phone. That way everyone knows it’s actually funny because they hear you laugh.
- Record yourself saying “I love you guys so much” in mushy voice and play it into the phone. Send the recording to your parents every morning until they can no longer say “you never call anymore.”
- Contact other bloggers to let them know it’s red mitten day or that everyone should wear their shirts with popped collars.
- MY FAVORITE: Abuse your friends by sending the Jingle Bells song sung by dogs. On every Friday in June.
Caveat Emptor:
Remember, when using any sort of phone dialer like this, you must comply with all FCC regulations and you cannot contact anyone on the federal No Call List. Be sure you are in compliance with all laws and please for the love of kittens, don’t abuse this tool (especially by recording anything while angry, drunk, sad, or driving on IH-35). Also, don’t use this to call me, I actually hate recordings and won’t ever sign up for them (but you can send me Jingle Bells songs).
Sherry Baker
December 27, 2008 at 3:32 pm
k you made me come and look to see what was going on today on AG, and you made me laugh. And think: hmmm, whom can I use & abuse with this awesome technology? I’d never had to speak to another client again, just a weekly automated jingle of their line to tell them their home is still listed, we had some showings, and “talk to you soon”. Sounds like a plan… ;P
Ken Brand
December 27, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Some would say, someone’s like my team of Realtor Icons, that I’ve deployed a telephonic version of Chinese Water Torture or against the Geneva Conventions – telephonic water boarding.
Amazing tools of the trade being created and launched everyday. Don’t know if this is my cup of tea.
I do know I REALLY appreciate hearing about the latest and greatest…thanks for sharing.
Elaine Reese
December 27, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Sounds like the company that handled all those political robo calls is trying to find a new use for their technology!
HOW AWFUL!
Seriously, the county I live in has a CodeRED alert system, where they call our phone numbers based on our address, if there is a tornado warning/siting that might hit our house. They can make 60K calls per hour. The first/last time they used it, the warning had expired by the time some of us got the call. 🙂
Doug Devitre
December 28, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I love it. I like to have fun with clients over the phone. Thanks for sharing.