Verification with an answering service

[Monica Simpson]

Good morning! I am going to help out a group of cloistered nuns with very little knowledge of technology. Pitching to someone with no knowledge of tech is never a walk in the park for me BUT they were an eager and appreciative audience as I've ever had.

Anyways, when someone calls their number, an answering service picks up, gives options and then rings at the house. How would this work for verifying their location? The head sister does have a cell phone that gets text messages but this is not the main location number. Would we want to change the phone number to the cell, verify and then change it back? But then wouldn't we need to verify on the correct number? They do not want people calling the cell. But had so many prank calls that they switched to the answering system. Any thoughts about how to work around this?

 

[shendison]

I've dealt with this quite a few times, and never come across an answering service that didn't offer a workaround, whether it's letting the phone ring through temporarily, direct to your client, or in some cases, they'll answer and verbally give you the code after putting you on call waiting / hold. Either way, you need to get permission, then contact the clients answering service on their behalf to see what they recommend.

 

[Monica Simpson]

Thank you for that response, but I didn't clarify... it s a machine that picks up before it even goes to a ring. Would the Google bot know to wait?

 

[shendison]

Thank you for that response, but I didn't clarify... it s a machine that picks up before it even goes to a ring. Would the Google bot know to wait?

Oh, sorry - nope. No way around that that I know of. Apple maps lets you phone verify by adding an extension number, but Google can't be bothered I guess. In the past I've been able to call Google and they'd manually dial the business, but now that there's no more phone support, verfify by post card is likely your best option.

 

[Aaron Boatin]

I am supposing you may have figured this out by now, but for others, if the telephone answering service is serving up a auto attendant greeting to prescreen calls, it can be easily turned off temporarily and routed to a live person who is made aware of what to expect from Google, etc. At our answering service, this is a fairly common occurrence as we work with customers marketing agencies.