A good post on the history of Time & Temperature in the Memphis area.  You'll notice the article says the service is still there and taking calls. Click here to read all about it. 

One of the most important and expensive aspects of running a Time and Temperature service in your community is the phone lines you will plug into your time and temperature system, the cost of those lines and the telephone provider you will get them from.

In the old days, you had one choice – you got your phone lines from your local landline telephone company.  While there are other options today, your best bet may still be the local phone company.  But what are your options?  You are aware of VOIP – everything from Magic Jack to Vonage to business-friendly VOIP providers.  RTI Media's Time & Temperature systems are the only systems available that work with VOIP services (in other words, a direct network connection to the T&T unit).  But in many cases, your best bet is still the local phone company – for now.

The issue with most VOIP providers is that they limit the number of inbound phone calls you can receive per month – if you go over the limit, you pay a per-call penalty.  So if the VOIP company's limit is 5,000 inbound calls per month you will pay a small charge for the 5001st call and up.  If your Time & Temperature service gets 100,000 calls per month, you could be looking at a hefty phone bill every month.

On the other hand, inbound calls on Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) from your local phone company carry no per-call charge, no matter how many calls your T&T service gets.

There are some special cases where VOIP service can be used for Time & Temperature right now without the extra monthly charge – typically in companies that are using VOIP for ALL their phone services, and they have spare phone lines on the system.  Their business may get hundreds of thousands of calls per month – adding 100,000 more for Time & Temp will not cause a problem, or extra charges.

While POTS lines from the local phone company may be a better deal for Time & Temp right now, that will probably not be the case in the future.  Just as the cost of long distance has trended toward zero, the cost of inbound VOIP calls will do the same – perhaps within two or three years.  At that point, VOIP will be the best deal in town for T&T phone service.  Time and Temperature units from RTI Media are all set to accept VOIP when the time comes.

If you are thinking of starting a new time and temperature service in your community, there are a number of issues to consider.  In a previous post, we discussed some of the issues involved in taking over a time and temp telephone number previously held by another person or company.  In this post, a discussion of the issues in starting a brand new service.

First – the number of phone lines you'll need.  This decision depends on the size of your community.  As a general rule, one phone line is never enough for any T&T service.  But in very small towns, two lines might be enough.  Your objective as a time and temp operator is to take as many calls as possible – but also to keep callers on the line for as short a time as possible.  For example, there are some T&T services in the northeast run by TV stations.  Naturally, they want their TV weathercasters to be providing the forecast – and sometimes they go into great detail about the forecast.  That's great information to provide, but a 2 minute, detailed forecast ties up the phone line.  The T&T system may have been able to handle several more callers in that time period. Instead, one of the phone lines was tied up, and other callers may have heard a busy signal.

The key to providing a two line T&T service is to keep each caller on the phone for short periods of time – freeing the line for the next caller.  In this way, you can take many more calls – thousands more per month. Keep in mind, of course, that some callers will listen to a portion of the T&T information, then hang up, freeing the line.

As for the phone number in a new T&T service, the key is for the number itself to be memorable – and you may find your options limited.  Many local phone company offices these days receive banks of 1,000 phone numbers to give to new customers. They have to use those numbers before getting the next batch of 1,000.  If the numbers they have available are not memorable you will have to choose the best of what is available or wait for the next batch of 1,000.

In the next post we'll look at how to choose the provider for the telephone lines, and whether VOIP is a viable option. 

If you are thinking of providing a Time and Temperature telephone service for your community, there are a number of things to consider.  In the next few posts, we'll look at the issues involved, including the phone number, the phone lines, the Time and Temperature announcer and promotional issues.

First – let's talk about the time and temperature phone number in your town. 

1) Do you have a current time and temp service and your old time and temp device is showing its age? 
2) Was there a time and temp service in your town operated by someone else, they shut it down, and you have obtained the phone number? 
3) Or are you starting fresh – with a new time and temp service, device and a new phone number?

If you answered "yes" to #1 or #2, much of your work is done.  You only need to obtain the time and temp announcer, then plug it into your phone lines.  You'll find information on our devices elsewhere on this website.  And keep in mind – if you fall into the #2 category – you have obtained a phone number used by others in your community in the past to offer a time and temperature service – there are two ways of looking at your situation. 

In a way, it's important to get your service up and running as quickly as possible on that phone number so members of the public don't stop calling the number (no operators of time and temp systems shut them down because they weren't getting enough calls – they shut the service down because they didn't know how to take advantage of the calls they were getting). 

On the other hand, we've seen examples of time and temp services being shut down by the original owners, then the service is resurrected by someone else in their town MONTHS later.  To their surprise, they find that the people who called the old time and temp service for years are STILL calling the number, even though the service is no longer there.  When the new time and temp service is put on the phones – area residents just resume calling again.  In substantial numbers. 

In our next column, we'll examine #3 – how to handle a brand new time and temperature service in your town.

A good story from Kokomo, Indiana today – the Telephone Time & Temperature service that had been discontinued in the town has been returned.  The previous provider of the service had shut it down – and that's when community and business leaders got involved, after hearing from town residents who missed the convenience of the service.  They combined their efforts and resources to bring time and temp back (working with another time and temp company), and expect to get over 100,000 calls per month.  An example of what those of us in the Time & Temp industry have been saying all along – millions of people nationwide depend on time and temp services every day, and it's still a great marketing tool.  I wonder how many Kokomo-based websites get over 100,000 hits per month?

Interesting survey from Consumer Reports – confirming  something we probably already know – customers aren't willing to wait in limbo to get someone on the phone. Just one reason to have an informative message on hold recording, and to take care in setting up the Auto Attendant greetings that answer your phone.  If your Auto Attendant has 6, or 7 or more choices for callers to make when their call is answered, you are probably losing customers.  The objective of a properly set up Auto Attendant is to give callers the information they need to deal with your company quickly, easily and clearly.  Then once you are speaking with them and you put them on hold for a moment – provide some useful information in an on hold recording so they aren't wasting their time while waiting!

When we are surrounded by news of the Internet, it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees.  Example: much more business is done on the telephone than on the Web.  Interesting article in one of my favorite magazines: Target Marketing – quotes a telemarketing tools producer:

"CEO Irv Shapiro  of Skokie, Ill.-based telemarketing software provider Ifbyphone. "Generally what we find is over the last 15 years the people who are experts on target marketing are spending the majority of their time working on the visual and tech side," he says. "These same people have forgotten that in the United States today, in terms of dollar volumes, 70 percent of all commerce involves phone calls."

Shapiro says "the telephone is the Rodney Dangerfield of technology – it gets no respect."  We sometimes see that issue with the telephone music\message on hold services that our sister company offers.  Business owners will spend thousands of dollars on a website, then ignore the opportunity to provide information to callers on hold (when a music\message on hold system and recording might cost a few hundred dollars). The website gets a few dozen or a few hundred hits per week, while the number of callers on hold might be into the thousands each week.  Plus – the on hold information can be used to drive traffic to the website.

Read the full Target Marketing article here.

Interesting article in Target Marketing Magazine pointing out that many marketers are incorrectly assuming the only way to market their products is with search engine marketing or social media marketing.  In other words, they are abandoning "tried and true" methods that worked in past years:

"The rise of social networking platforms and the autonomous rule of search engines have led marketers to prematurely declare the death of several forms of personal and mass communications."

We learned in Marketing 101 that effective marketing means using ALL possible means of communicating with potential customers – and there is no "one size fits all."  And often, the most non-traditional way of reaching customers may be the most effective. That can include traditional radio, TV, newspapers, direct mail – and of course – telephone time and temperature.  Just as online marketers would never rely solely on Google to reach their prospects (thus ignoring the 1\3rd of web users who don't turn to Google for search) – effective marketers know they have to be creative in their use of all media to get the job done. 

The Target Marketing article focuses on one important aspect of business marketing – your phone number.  Does it spell out your business name?  Or is it memorable?  Lots of customers still want to call you to ask questions.  How hard will you make it for them?  Are you using the phone effectively?  You can find the full article here. 

Do people still call time and temperature phone numbers on the telephone? One of our customers (a rural telecom company) recently gathered calling statistics for the time and temp system we provided to them.  In a town of 3500, they received over 3800 calls in a 6 day period. 

The details provide some interesting insights:

Local Calls:  1242
Extended Area Service Calls: 1055
Toll Calls: 1022
Cell Calls: 576

The "Local" calls are coming from within the town limits. 

"Extended Area Service" means the callers live just outside of town, but they pay the phone company to be able to make toll-free calls into town. 

"Toll Calls" are callers who are calling long distance from a landline phone.

"Cell Calls" came in from cell phones. 

We already knew that a number of calls are made from cell phones to Time & Temp systems – what is interesting are the number of calls coming from long distance customers – who may be paying long distance charges to call the Time & Temp service. 

If we apply these same usage statistics to other methods of communicating with the public, you can assume that Time & Temp in this small town is a very effective service.  For example, what would you say about a website that had 3800 hits per week in a town of 3500?  You would say it was a rather effective website!

Is it still time for time and temperature services on the telephone?  It's easy to suggest that time and temp may no longer be needed – after all, we have the Internet and smartphones.  Information, including weather information, is easy to obtain these days.

However – there are still millions of calls made to time and temperature telephone numbers every day, and there is still a need for strictly audio information on the phone.  Smartphones are great, and they can display all kinds of information on those little screens.  But not if you're driving!  That may be one reason we see evidence of numerous calls made to time and temp services from cellphone users.

It's also easy to forget those who may not be quite as "connected" as others.  Recent studies show that about 1\3rd of Americans don't have Internet access at home, and as many as 21% of Americans are not on the Internet at all, and have no wish to be.  With a population exceeding 300 million, that means many millions of people don't have the instant access to information many others have.   A potential market of 100 million is still an attractive market to any business.

In addition, history has shown us that Americans don't abandon one form of media when another one comes along.  When radio arrived in the 1920's, the predictions were that radio would be the "death" of newspapers (it wasn't).  When TV was invented, it would be the "death" of radio (it wasn't).  And when the Internet arrived, it would mean the end of newspapers, radio and television.  True enough, the Internet has forced changes on all those industries, but if they play their cards right, they'll be here many years from now.  

In other words, when a new form of communicating arrives, we  just add it to our "media mix" – we don't abandon what we have used to that point.  The same can be said of time & temperature on the telephone – it remains a valuable and appreciated public service for millions of people every day.  

In the future, we'll give you some examples!