There are two kinds of message services out there. The automated kind and the live kind. The automated kind is familiar to us all. You call up a company and encounter either someone's voice mail or a convoluted automated system that runs you around their phone bank like a rat in a maze. I do not like this kind of service, so I'll only be discussing the latter, or live message services.

Live Message Services

I strongly feel that live message services are far superior to automated message services. I can't begin to tell how much business I've lost and how many customers I've neglected using automated services. Voice mails get lost or accidentally erased. Messages that don't sound important often get placed on the back burner and sometimes you just don't get around to it at all, only to find out later how truly important a call it was. Live message services help me avoid all that.

I've been using live message services for years now and I will never go back. When customers call, my service is able to ask probing questions in order to find out the exact nature of the call. Often, my message service is able to answer the customer's question and take care of it without distracting me, but if not they can guarantee that I will get the message and respond accordingly and in a prompt and attentive fashion.

Of course, I have not completely abandoned voice mail. Now I just have a better way to respond. My message service sends my voice mail messages directly to my email. I spend so much of my time on email that this solution is ideal. I can see what messages are waiting or store those I want to hear later.