Ringing Phones
It has been a busy week of meetings and working on final preparations for moving to our new website. Of course, on the busiest weeks, something always has to go wrong… right? Well, this week’s hurdle was our voicemail….
On Tuesday afternoon, a staff member alerted me that incoming calls were not making it to the automated attendant system. I quickly found that voicemail was completely down. I took the long hike up to the children’s ministry building where our phone system still lives and reset the voicemail card. All good, right? Uh, wrong…
On Wednesday morning, I bearly sat down at my desk before having multiple people coming to my desk saying that the phones weren’t working again. So, I make the hike to the children’s ministry building and reset the voicemail card again. I hoped it was just a fluke. I prayed that it was just a fluke. All good again, right? Uh, no…
Bad and annoying turned worse late Wednesday morning when the voicemail and automated attendant stopped working again. I made a call to the vendor and explained the situation. Hoping for the best, I was squashed with the bad news that it sounded like our voicemail card needed to be replaced. They jumped right on finding options for replacing the card. Card was ordered on Thursday and overnighted to arrived today for install this afternoon. All good, right? Sadly, no…
One of the components is on back order and the install for today was cancelled. Last I heard, the part should be shipped today or Monday, with install either Monday or Tuesday after of right now.
In the mean time, in the midst of one ministry assistant on vacation, one ministry assitant suddenly in the hospital, membership classes at both campuses this weekend, the women’s ministry consignment sale at the Weddington campus, many staff working on big projects, everyone thinking towards Easter planning, and more, this happens. And I forgot to mention that we don’t have a receptionist. We heavily rely on our automated attendant and volunteers to cover our front desk during the week.
Reality is that sometimes technology and equipment breaks. What systems are in place to make sure that as little as possible falls through the cracks during the down time? For us that means calling in the volunteer troops to aid us with answering the phones. It means that anyone who sees or hears the phone ringing needs to jump in to answer it. It means taking messages for staff not at their desk to take a phone call and passing those messages on by email and Yammer. We even pulled out the old two-part phone message pad. Glad we didn’t throw that in the garbage when we moved the offices into the new building last fall!
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