AwayFind: While you were away, Bob needed to reach you right now!
Posted by Ron Harris on Mon, Jan 10, 2011
You get an urgent email from someone named Bob, and a company you are getting ready to work with asking for information to update a quote, or get your help with something, or some other matter that requires your immediate attention. At least Bob things the matter needs your help immediately.
You're out of the office. You have your Out of Office message turned on so Bob knows that you didn't get the urgent message. How does Bob get a hold of you if he doesn't have an alternate way of reaching you?
Fortunately, if this situation were to happen to me, Bob would see the link in my email signature to the AwayFind service and a way he can reach out to me right now. Bob clicks the link and sees a form he can use to send me a quick message to my mobile phone via SMS. Here's the form I use.
Bob enters his name, company, email address and phone number plus a short messasge describing the nature of his request. He tells AwayFind that he prefers a phone call and clicks Send the Message. I get his message on my mobile phone moments later as a text message.
I can determine whether Bob's urgent matter should become my urgent matter. If Bob is a client or a prospect, then yes indeed, I want to get back to Bob as soon as I can. There may be other situations where it is important to respond.
I try to only check email a few times a day because of the amount of time it takes to get back to a task once I've been interrupted. Or, if I'm in meetings all day, it is very rude to keep checking email, or so my wife tells me. I use AwayFind to help call my attention to something marked urgent.
The current version of AwayFind gives you the ability to hook directly into your email Inbox and proactively look for messages you want to know about immediately. Say you're the account manager for 3 of your company's top accounts and it's your job to respond quickly to urgent requests from them. Using AwayFind you can setup a filter that looks in your email Inbox for messages from anyone at <keyaccount1domain.com> that are sent to you and flagged with high importance. When these messages arrive, you can receive a text message on your mobile phone, or with certain plans, you can have AwayFind call your phone and read you the message. You have the ability to set the hours you want to receive these notifications, so you could setup AwayFind to send you text messages when you get any message from your key account during the work week, and then only get high importance messages during the weekend between 8 am and 11 pm. The system is very flexible and able to filter based on a number of criteria such as looking for key words in the subject line or body of the messages you receive.
Another feature of AwayFind gives you the ability to add a subject line to the message Bob enters on his message. For example, you might want Bob to be able to select a subject line "Urgent technical support request". AwayFind can be setup to see that subject line and send the request to another person in your company who is on your tech support team. I hope you're getting the idea that this utility can really help you improve your customer service and be more available to the people that are important to you.
The developers of AwayFind are not talking much about the features available in the next version of the system, but these guys are very creative and listen to requests from the user community. I can't wait to see what they come up with.
There are some links at the bottom of the page for more information on AwayFind. There's even a link that provides a discount if you want to sign up for the Pro account, it expires 2/15/2011. At a minimum, you should sign up for the free account and see if you like the idea of being more available to your customers or other important people in your life.
By the way, using AwayFind means that you don't have to give out your mobile phone number to anyone, but are able to get messages on that phone just the same, when you want them.
Resources
AwayFind's Website for more information
Link to Sign Up for a Pro account with Monthly billing
Link to Sign Up for a Pro account with Annual billing