Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cloud based voicemail to replace on-site show times recording

This is topic Cloud based voicemail to replace on-site show times recording in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 05-20-2016, 01:03 AM:

With the price of landlines getting more expensive, we are looking for an alternative for our show times recording number. Ideally we would like to find a cloud based service we can port our recording number to, and set the voice mail for announcement only.

Just curious if anyone has recommendations for such a service.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-20-2016, 02:43 AM:

My "now playing" phone line is provided by our friendly local cable tv and Internet company, and it includes voicemail as part of the service. I have the voicemail set to answer on the first ring so it's pretty much instant when someone calls in, and there's never a busy signal either.

The only drawback is that there's apparently no way to set it for outbound messages only, so my work-around is to keep reading my message over and over until it runs out of recording time for the outbound message (2 minutes I think); people think it repeats endlessly so they always hang up long before it gets to the end of the allotted time and I never have any messages waiting on that line.

Posted by Michael Putlack (Member # 6523) on 05-20-2016, 04:45 AM:

Frank, your trick of repeating your session times is EXCELLENT!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-20-2016, 07:39 AM:

Some theatre owners like the Jack Roe system (gets your information via your POS and generates the answering system).

https://www.jackroe.com/fone-and-go-faqs.html

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-20-2016, 09:24 AM:

I'm looking for the same as Justin. We're currently forwarding our number to a Vonage account. It... works, but I'm neutral on how well. The announcement time is limited (a little over 1 minute, I think), and you can't turn the message recording off. Those are the points I'd want to fix.

As I read the promo site, Phone-and-go won't work for me. I want to record my own. Also, being a drive-in, with floating start times, polling the POS won't work.

Multiple callers
Local number to forward to
Reasonable announcement time
Announcement only

Don't need a menu tree.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-20-2016, 11:33 AM:

How often do movie theater customers call a phone line for showtimes these days?

I would assume the volume of calls has had to have dropped in recent years due to the prevalence of web-based theater directories and showtimes. It has probably been at least 10 years or more since I called a movie theater's phone line for any show information.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-20-2016, 02:12 PM:

I used to be able to predict our crowd size by looking at the answering machine and seeing how many calls had come in that day.

And we used to get a ton of calls during kids movies from parents asking what time the show is out....now we hardly ever get those calls. I guess the kids call the folks on their cellphone when they get out.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-20-2016, 02:15 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
How often do movie theater customers call a phone line for showtimes these days?

It has dropped dramatically, but it hasn't completely disappeared. At its peak, we had 16 phone lines here, going into a computer with telephony cards and voicemail software. They were very busy on the weekends, and we ran a small voicemail service to keep them busy the rest of the time. Now, one line, running into phone company voicemail does the job. Social media has pretty much taken the load of getting the word out for us.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 05-20-2016, 02:44 PM:

Same as Jack in terms of volume. Our drive-in recording probably gets less than 100 call per week right now, although we are not into our summer season.

Our cinema used to have 4 recording lines and we would get 2500-3000 calls per week. Now we are down to 2 lines - one shared with the alarm panel. We know the second line hardly ever gets used because it causes a fault with the alarm panel when it does get used. Total call volume is down to maybe 200-300 calls in a weekend.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 05-20-2016, 03:42 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
How often do movie theater customers call a phone line for showtimes these days?

A lot more than you think.

I pretty much switched our entire company over to Jack Roe Fone and Go (12 of 14 locations).

Since you are porting your recording line over to them - you don't have to worry about it anymore (no more busy signals). It integrates well with most P.O.S. systems. They even have a Web GUI that allows you to go in and manually override things if needed. Most importantly - its a crystal clear, professional, recording.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-20-2016, 04:13 PM:

Just last night I had an old lady ask on her way in, "Do you advertise your movies anywhere that people can find out about them?" I asked her if she has Internet and she says that her grandson does. I gave her one of my fridge magnets with the website URL and the what's playing phone number on it and explained that she can call that number any time to find out what's playing and what's coming next, and she was happy.

For any of you folks who don't have fridge magnets, get some. Everyone likes them and takes them home; they don't get tossed into the trash like business cards would.

Posted by Christopher Perkins (Member # 8917) on 06-25-2016, 09:13 PM:

We currently use our local phone provider and they offer something called a CBX. Almost like PBX. It is a voip service. I can call into my showtime line and than press * to record my new showtimes. Of course with a couple of codes. My showtime line is hooked up to something to an Auto Attendant. It is set up as announce only. I know a lot about VOIP services and PBX. There is so many features with it. But the best deal that I have found so far is Nextiva. They provide you with a free number and unlimited auto attendants. The best thing with an auto attendant is that unlimited customer can call your showtime line with no busy signal. That means you can have 1-100 or more customer listening to your showtime line at once.

Also the cool thing is with the service is if you decide to use service you can change your phone service over to them. Their phone allows you to have multi lines and intercom features, conference features, extension dialing, call transfer (customer calls asking for showtimes you can just transfer them to your showtime line), Manager or employee voicemail, Direct phone number to your office phone, On hold music and much more. Also if you have multiple sister locations, You can have them on the same phone system and this is all done by internet. You can also call them by an extension. Also if you have a customer that is looking for your sister location, as long as you guys are on the same phone system you can transfer them right over to that location. There so feature that PBX can provide I can go on and on about it. Any question you can email me christopherperkins@hollywoodcinemasbangor.com or talk to the guy at Nextiva. He could explain it to you.

He quoted me $87.00 for all that

Here is his information:

Gage Staruch
Corporate Account Executive | Nextiva
P (480) 565-6106
https://www.nextiva.com/