When power goes out, inclement weather prevents the office from opening, or any other out of the ordinary event takes place and prevents your office from being able to answer or forward your phones, you may want to consider doing the following:

1. Install an emergency phone jack (called an RJ-11):

The jack should be located between where the phone line comes in from the street and your electronic phone system’s switch. In the event of a power outage, you can still forward your phones to the answering service by plugging an inexpensive touch tone phone into this jack and following your routine forwarding instructions. You can continue to dial out on this phone without any worry of creating a busy signal for your callers. Their calls, once forwarded, will continue to be routed to the answering service and will not interfere with your ability to dial out.

2. Change or update your greeting:

If you are a call screening customer, you might want to consider using your outgoing message to make your callers aware of the office’s status. If the office is opening late, closed for the day, or in the office but out for lunch, updating your message can be done from any touch tone phone and, we have found, puts your callers at ease as well as may save you time when returning calls to customers or patients who are just wondering if the office will be open for their appointment. If you need instructions on how to record or change messages in your mailbox, please do not hesitate to contact us.

3. Contact us with your office status and/or on-call changes:

So that our operators can give the most accurate information to your callers, it is really helpful to know whether you are open, closed, opening late, or any other status that may have changed from the norm. You can contact us by phone or email at 860-677-2811 or  ppavelchak@advancecommunications.com and supervisor@advancecommunications.com.  

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