Wrong Numbers were killing this small business at TollFreeNumbers.com

Wrong Numbers were killing this small business

Here’s a real life example of wrong numbers really hurting a business and my suggestion on a solution to deal with them.

Dear Bill:

The last four days phone calls coming into my business have been a nightmare! Our customers all across the United States cannot get through because our toll-free line is constantly tied up with misdialed incoming calls (calls which I am being billed for by Sprint.)

The Steve Wilkos Show (an NBC Universal nationally-syndicated TV program – off-shoot from the “Jerry Springer show”), has the number 1-888-9WILKOS for their viewers to call in comments. They say the number outloud by name only – and don’t show the digits on the screen. The caliber of people who watch that show don’t know how to spell WILKOS… as a result, all those viewer calls are coming into my business toll-free line, 1-888-994-LAMP because the callers are spelling WILKOS with a “C” (2) instead of a “K” (5).

This show is aired all over the world in different time zones, so my phone is tied up sometimes 10 or 11 hours every day. We normally do several thousand dollars of business each week…. this week we’ve taken one order totalling $8.49 !

I’ve sent e-mails and attempted to contact over 100 people about this problem; they have not responded to my e-mails or returned my calls. I’ve consulted lawyers, telephone companies, Attorney Generals, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, radio and tv talk show hosts, and newspaper editors, to try to resolve this bizarre problem. I’ve registered my concerns on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, TV.com, and Steve Wilkos’ website blogs – still no input from anybody.

Simple Solution: Have the Steve Wilkos Show put the actual phone NUMBER on the TV screen – not just the letters of his vanity phone number. Instead of just saying the vanity number, actually say the numbers. Can’t reach a live person connected with his show, or with NBC Universal – I’ve left dozens and dozens of messages – no one will return my call. I’ve had our lamp shop toll-free number for a long time. If we change it, we’ll have a ton of work and expense to change all our stationery & billing forms, not to mention all the web pages on www.lampshademaker.com an www.acrosstheboardwoodwork.com.

Do you have any recommendation besides changing our toll-free number? Appreciate your time! Thank you.

Hannah Murphy

http://www.lampshademaker.com

Across-The-Board Woodworks

Hi Hannah,

I’m very sorry to hear about your problem. It looks like you had the number cancelled by Sprint on Friday. That is obviously one way to handle it, but I would recommend that if you would be losing business by changing it, that instead of cancelling it, that you just transfer it from Sprint to one of the enhanced voicemail services.

They will put a recorded greeting on there, like thank you for calling Across The Board Woodworks, on the internat at Lampshademaker.com. If you’d like to talk to us about Lamp sales or have any questions related to ordering a lamp, press one. If you have questions about existing lamp shade orders, or to reach someone in the office regarding our unique lamp shades, press two. If you’re calling for any other reason other than wood working or lamp shades, you have dialed wrong.

Notice how I repeated lamp shades and wood working a LOT to make sure even the dense ones get the idea as much as possible. That will eliminate 97% of the wrong numbers. You will only get the very densest of the dense and senile. The only thing to do for them is to tell them that Steve Wilkos is never going to talk to them and hang up, or that his shows are all taped for the next 6 months because he’s having a sex change operation, but not to tell anyone. Have some fun with the few that get through because it’s the only way to stay sane. Hopefully they will be a small enough number that they won’t really hurt your operations. You’ll still wind up paying for the incoming calls for the wrong numbers to hear the message but most won’t press a button to talk to someone about woodworking etc, if you put a specific description like that and not just customer service.

Then get another number and start the process of changing away from that number. After a while you can also change the message to give out the new number. You don’t have to get rid of it until you’re sure it’s been out of circulation for long enough and the transition won’t cost you much at all. This is better than losing all your existing callers and business until they know the new number. I think this will help more than asking them to include the digits on it and you can do it right away.

You can then contact them to see if they want to pay you for the phone number, although it’s not that easy to market them if they’re not interested. Wrong numbers can be valuable for the right situation. It might be a talent scout that looks for wacky people and charges them a fee to try to get them onto shows like this guy’s or it might just be people selling computers to people with bad credit for $29 a week. (Crazy people trying to get on shows like that might be more likely to have bad credit – just a guess) But someone might want to get free advertising for those callers. Or you can just get rid of it if nothing else, but if you can turn the lemons into lemon aid, why not?

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions or need help with anything else.

Bill Quimby