Voice mail for small businesses: Home TeleVoice is a stand-alone system that turns one phone line into 25 mailboxes - Business On-Line

Home Office Computing, August, 1991 by Ric Manning

Home TeleVoice Is a

Stand-Alone System That

Turns One Phone Line

into 25 Mailboxes

"Hello. You've reached Ersatz International, the world leader in business consulting services. For sales and marketing, press 1. To order Ersatz publications, press 2. To hear a recording of business tips from CEO Ben Bogus, press 3. To send a fax, press 4. And to leave a message for anyone on the Ersatz staff, press 5."

Sound familiar? Voice-mail messages greet thousands of business callers every day. Market researchers say U.S. businesses will spend close to $1 billion this year for voice-mail systems.

Though criticized for being somewhat impersonal, voice-mail systems are hard to beat for efficiency and dependability. Besides routing calls to different extensions--which answering machines can't do--they capture every message accurately, work round the clock, and don't take vacations.

Voice mail can work just as hard for a small, home-based business as it does for a sprawling office complex. Ersatz International could be a big outfit in a glass tower downtown or a one-person operation in a basement office, but you'd never guess by the way its phone is answered.

Until recently, a sophisticated voice-mail system was too expensive and too elaborate to be practical for a home office. Prices for most stand-alone systems start at about $3,000; those that sell for $500 require a dedicated computer.

But a new system called Home TeleVoice, introduced at last winter's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is designed to appeal to home and small-business customers. With a list price of $750, the system offers the features of voice-mail systems that cost three times as much. And it's a stand-alone product that doesn't require a dedicated computer.

Although Home TeleVoice costs more than some single-line voice-mail circuit cards for MS-DOS computers, it can be an attractive alternative. Some computer cards, such as the Bigmouth system (Talking Technology; $295), require a dedicated computer. That can bump the price of the entire package up to more than $1,000, not to mention the demand for desk space.

Even cards that can operate in the background, such as The Complete Communicator (The Complete PC; $495), will gobble up a sizable chunk of hard-disk storage. A system with four mailboxes consumes from 6- to 16MB of disk space.

The Home TeleVoice system is built on two circuit boards that contain a microprocessor, a digital voice processor, and a storage device--essentially a tiny hard drive. The boards are packaged in two boxes designed to sit on a bookshelf. You press numbers on a telephone keypad and talk into a receiver to program the system.

Designed for one phone line, Home TeleVoice provides up to 25 personalized mailboxes, each of which can have an individual extension number. The system can store up to two hours of messages in digital form and play them back for a remote caller. It also can route calls to a fax machine.

VOICE MAIL IN A SMALL OFFICE

Michael Darnell, who shares a Louisville, Kentucky, law office with one partner, said he bought the system after clients complained that Darnell wasn't getting messages left with his answering service.

"I never wanted to have an answering machine, but the way this is set up, it's very simple," he said. "If you have a message for me, you press 1; if you have a message for my partner, you press 2."

Darnell has used the system a few times to get messages to clients or witnesses who are hard to reach: "I tell them to call any time, day or night, and I give them an extension number to press. When you hear the introduction, it says, 'If you know the extension you want, press it now.' They are the only ones who know the number, so they're the only ones who can retrieve the message." Darnell also uses the system like a dictation machine. He calls the office phone from home and leaves messages for himself.

Bob Williams bought Home TeleVoice to help with the accounting, tax-consulting, and apartment-rental business he runs from his home. "I think it really has great potential," he said. "With an answering service, I have only one identity. This gives me several."

Williams said he asks callers to press one extension to leave messages about the accounting business, and another for the real-estate business. He's considering adding an option that would let callers hear descriptions of the apartments he has for rent.

So far, Home TeleVoice handles only one line. The fax-routing option lets users avoid the cost of installing a separate line for a fax machine. But people sending the fax have to listen when they call and manually choose the fax line, which cuts out automatic fax transmissions.

Home TeleVoice is available directly from Home TeleVoice, Inc. ([800] 326-8642), and should be available in mail-order catalogs later this year, according to president Jeff Wellemeyer.

Home TeleVoice is also sold through dealers who install Nu Tone home intercom systems. When connected to a Nu Tone intercom--or to a separate speaker--Home TeleVoice will announce each call: "Excuse me, Ben Bogus, you have a telephone call." If no one picks up the phone after two announcements, Home TeleVoice will take a message and place it in the proper voice mailbox.