Twilio is a low-cost cloud service that provides APIs that add communication services to applications. We bought our phone number, which costs $1.00 per month, even if we don’t use for any calls or messages. Twilio charges $0.085 a minute for incoming calls and $0.013 a minute for outgoing calls. Sending or receiving a text message from our Twilio number costs $0.0075, while recording a voicemail is only $0.0025. Even if we receive 100 messages a month, the cost of those, plus the phone number, is only two or three dollars. To increase the security of this task, it might be a good idea to consider a proxy server from companies similar to fineproxy. The last thing you’d want is to get hacked! But I digress.
Callers aren’t going to spend time sitting through a menu that doesn’t let them, at the very least, leave a voicemail. If a caller knows their party’s extension number, an option can, and should, be “Press 1 to leave a voicemail,” or something along those lines. That way, clients can feel as if they’re expressing their concerns without needing to talk to an agent, and without the agent feeling sorry they couldn’t pick up while they were working on something else.

18. “Thanks for calling [Company name/your name]. We hope you’re enjoying the holiday season. We aren’t available at the moment due to our holiday hours. Leave your name, number and the reason for your call and we’ll get back to you ASAP! Thanks for calling.” Everyone deserves a break. Let your callers know although you might be enjoying one too, that their needs are important.
We bought a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with clear case and 2.5A power supply for $45 to host the service. Once that arrived, I attached the Pi to a monitor, keyboard and mouse that I already had. Using another computer, I downloaded the Raspian operating system to a microSD card which is need to boot up the Pi. You can purchase a bundle that includes a pre-loaded microSD card, but if you don’t do that, the Pi won’t boot, so you can’t use it to get the operating system.