[Corey Cohron RIP]

Originally Posted by cleatus12r

Awesome post, Corey.

I'd like to point out and elaborate on one piece of that a little bit, if I may.

"I imagine we could hire other people to answer phone calls, but they would simply be taking messages, which would require us to call customers back after hours."

That's probably the most frequent complaint I get. Unfortunately for those of us who answer the phones (who aren't Bill), we don't have the ability to work with programmer issues or software problems. Bill is the only one who can do that and many times it's hard to convey that to the customer. Sure, Corey has her jobs in the office, I have mine here in Montana, and then there's Bill who is the ONLY one that can deal with many of the issues that arise (that's the problem with being that smart). More people answering the phones WOULD MOST CERTAINLY just increase peoples' frustration by having to leave messages for Bill without instant call-backs.

You're absolutely right about that. When I was out in December due to my surgery, we had a friend answering phones and taking messages. That translated into about 3-4 hours of Bill having to call customers back AFTER taking care of his regular obligations in the office. There were many nights when he brought the messages and the office phone to bed just so we'd be able to spend some time together, and I'm sure there are STILL customers that didn't get a return call...