Convince customers to leave phone message

Have office # forward to a cell phone when you are out. Your message should provide alternate methods to contact you other than voice mail (website, email). Include times when you will be available. Obviously you want to cater to current customers, but not to the extent to where it makes getting new ones impossible. If you charge an hourly fee, your clients may not appreciate you being on the phone with someone else.

People who cannot get help at the time they need it move on to someone who will help them right now. You're hurting your software business and losing customers. Do whatever you have to do to answer the phone during business hours.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Avoid messaging services. They are usually a very small step above an answering machine in terms of being any practical help to your customers.

2. Get someone to send you an invite for a google voice account. You can easily ring multiple phones and/or forward calls to another number when you're unavailable.

3. Can't always take calls while you're out? Forward them to someone who can intelligently answer the phone for you. Almost everyone knows someone available part time to take calls. Many are relations and may help out for free or a very reasonable cost (perhaps for the price of a nice cell phone and plan).

4. Change your out of office schedule to allow you to hire a part time college student. Students are savvy and like to get paid to be available for your business calls while they study.

There are solutions available where a voice tells the caller when you will be available again. This service reads from your outlook calendar (if you have one). This can be a good service and possibly alleviate a part of the problem