As a deep blanket of white stuff descends across the eastern US, One Call Now is pumping out the calls, texts and emails. Delays, closings and schedule changes due to weather impacted millions of people served by our clients. Our dedicated staff works 24/7/365 so we can effectively Protect, Inform and Engage.
All ten dialing locations were humming; our triple redundant systems and dozens of alternative phone carriers did what was expected. The system just worked.
This morning, even with tens of thousands of homes without power across the mid west and phone lines down; 99.99% of all calls were dialed within our short Service Level Agreement (SLA) time frame.
It’s puzzling to me that One Call Now is the only company to offer an SLA and one of the few with 24/7/365 toll-free, no-charge tech support for anyone needing to send a message.
Our 35,000 clients know these are critical and crucial requirements when deciding what company to depend on when people’s lives and safety are at stake.
For Business Continuity, School to Parent communications, Government emergency outreach, church/synagogue congregation communications and team information; When Messages Matter, We Deliver.
Tuesday, May 5th is election day for many school districts across the country- seeking to fight an uphill battle for taxpayer money in a very tough economy. Even simple renewal levies and referendums are at risk.
One Call Now sends automated notification calls to millions of families every day, and We are pleased to have donated over $50,000 in phone calls to school levy committees to reach voters with their key messages to help get the funds needed for our children.
This season, dozens more are using our help, with professional script writing techniques, and our white paper on how to use the power of voice to win votes.
We recommend calls go not just to parents and staff, (generally called preaching to the choir calls), but to the entire community, and that’s why we donate calls to the entire community for any school client needing help to win elections. We also often provide the lists of voters, or assist in preparing the lists and the calls – also gratis. We set up a separate (feee) account, and donate the calls to the levy committee – rather than to our client, the school; which might force the school to provide calls for the opposition committee, threatening the outcome.
My wife wears a t-shirt that says “Wouldn’t it be great when schools get all the funding they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”.
Until that day comes, One Call Now will do whatever we can for every K12 client to help reduce the dependency on bake sales and help get the funding needed to produce the next generation of highly educated Americans.
We are pleased to have won a National Political Consultants POLLIE award for the best automated school phone campaign in the country; where we used geo-targeting techniques to call voters in wards and precinct more likely to vote yes and avoid calling in ‘NO’ vote enclave areas. That campaign, and a majority of the ones we work on, won overwhelmingly.
If you have a funding issue or levy coming up, call us. we’ll call your voters. Effectively. Quickly, and for even better than cheaply- for free.
Send us a request and we’ll send you the “Top Ten Tips To Win Votes” white paper, by clicking here
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PS- Ward 4 now votes in several of our office training rooms; the county had been seeking a handicapped accesible, centralized facility, and after we moved here in February, we were happy to make it available. We even took down the ‘Vote for the Renewal Levy” signs in the hallway!
Fort Bend, TX has 68,000 families in their school system.
When this school district in Texas cancelled school, at 6:00am, due to the Swine Flu Emergency, parents did not get the call. Instead, because their district had purchased a parent notification call-out system from one of the firms that sell a hardware phone dialer in the school plus limited access to a separate rapid-calling system – that charges the district a per-call fee for mass call-outs; a district staffer decided that a few calls to the media instead would save money.
Parents dropped off their kids in front of locked buildings, blissfully unaware that school had been closed. Maybe the parents need to be forced to listen to select media outlets; or maybe, just maybe, schools like Fort Bend should select Parent Broadcast Systems like One Call Now that allows unlimited anytime telephone, text and email notifications directly to the devices, homes and phones of each parent – in minutes.
Unlimited Calling to reach anyone, anytime- every-time is what we offer to schools. Because When Messages Matter- we deliver.
That’s why we are also offering a completely free, NO-charge emergency alert system for any school system, public safety agency, business or community/religious organization to enable their administrators and managers to reach everyone immediately. Learn more here
Learn more about How NOT to do it by reading on…
Stumbles In Fort Bend ISD’s Notification System
How did some Fort Bend ISD students learn this morning that school had been canceled?
Some guy drove up to their bus stop and told them. They trudged home from there.
These days, you’d think any school district too big for the old phone-tree would have a computer system that would make automatic calls to parents in emergency situations.
Fort Bend does indeed have one, but the district didn’t use it this morning.
Essentially, spokesperson Mary Ann Simpson said, the district decided not to bother.
“We have a service we can use that can call all households — but the media began announcing it immediately, so it was decided we did not need to do the call out to 68,000 homes — that word was getting out quickly,” she says.
But it might’ve helped, she admits.
The decision to cancel classes was made at 6 am, she says. “The weather, and the rapid rate at which it unfolded this morning, was remarkable. By 6:00 am, some of our high school students are already on their way to the bus stop for school. So I know some were caught off guard,” she says.
But the district did everything it could short of using the automated message, she says: “I called all the TV stations by 6:05 and had something on the website by 6:10 am. Also, the phone message on the main district line was changed quickly to say we were closed.”
Which didn’t help at least one parent, who called her kid’s school only to get a terse confirmation from a harried teacher who said she couldn’t talk longer because she had another 100 or so calls waiting for her to answer.
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I have nothing to add.
One Call Now sends hundreds of thousands of voice messages and phone notification messages a day for schools, churches, synagogues, youth groups and businesses. In every case, making sure the message is clearly undersatood is critical to effective communications.
I listen to dozens of messages every week, and have a few tips to offer based on what we hear…..
1- Have Caller ID set to display YOUR local number and name. Leading notification services offer this feature, it dramatically improves the ‘pick-up’ rate, how many people will answer the phone when it rings and hear your message.
2- Make sure calls do NOT start with the dreaded telemarketing ‘dead air’ syndrome. Some Notification Services start calls the way those pesky telemarketing calls do… with a long pause of dead air. Most parents just hang up at that point. Make sure the call immediately starts with your greeting.
3- Start with a consistent greeting. Make sure you can, and do pre-record a consistent greeting for all messaging from your school or organization. Such as “This is an important message from Heywood Elementary”, or “This is Pastor Bob from United church, with news for you…” It quickly identifies the call and tells the family what to do next, which is simple. Just listen for a moment.
Write down what you want to say before recording the message. Make sure to follow the five “W’s” of broadcast journalism- go ahead, pretend you are a TV anchorperson or newscaster!
Include the WHAT WHEN WHERE WHO and WHY. (and usually HOW- which is a W if you read it backwards)
4- WHAT are you calling about “The Upcoming Meeting has been cancelled”, or “The fundraiser will start Thursday”
5- WHEN is key… If changing an event date or time, be clear about which date is canceled and when the new one is. When announcing a new date, say the day, date and time. I suggest you repeat it.
“The rehearsal for tonight has been changed due to icy roads. The new rehearsal date is Friday at 7PM in the auditorium, that’s 7pm Friday in the auditorium for the changed rehearsal time, pray for a thaw!”
6-WHERE is obvious, if the venue has moved it’s crucial. “The 4pm game tomorrow has been moved from North Field #2 to The South Park, field #3; That’s South Park Field #3, tomorrow at 4pm instead of the published site on your calendar.”
7- WHO… You never know who will pick up the phone, so it’s usually a good idea to say who the message is for. “The youth choir rehearsal will start at 4:30pm instead of 5pm tomorrow Friday”
8- WHY: Whenever changing or moving an event or activity, you cause families to change their schedules to accommodate you. If there’s a good reason, they will understand, but if there’s not, it can appear you are being capricious or scatter brained! So say why the change is needed. If it’s a safety issue, not only will they move things around, but they’ll appreciate your action.You don’t need much detail, but a quick few words make a big difference.
Example: “Due to icy roads…” OR “Due to a bank robbery near the school…” OR “The other team has a transportation issue…”.
9- HOW: Here we mean HOW to confirm message receipt, or HOW to contact you with their availability. The best Messaging systems allow you to ask a poll type question such as “school will be dismissing early due to forecast for more snow and treacherous conditions later today. Press ’1′ if we can drop your child off at home when we dismiss at noon; press ’2′ to say you will call the school to make other arrangements…” OR “To help us plan for the picnic, please use touch tone key to tell me how many people will be attending saturday at noon”.
10- WOW ‘em with clarity: Speak clearly, slowly and avoid slang expressions that may confuse folks at home who don’t know you, but will need to hear and act on your message. ex: “That’s a 10-4 on the re-do guys, game on!” (I really heard this!) when you mean, “The other team confirmed the change so we will have our re-scheduled tournament game today at 4PM on field number 5″.
PS. If your Notification Service offers on-line message reports, check to see that everyone was reached, particularly just after loading a new call list roster. It’s easy to mistype a number, or misread the scribble the parent gave you. Send a test message before using a new roster for a real message!
Communications, whether to a team of 10 or a school district of 10,000 is all about speaking clearly, and including everything necessary for the message to get through.
You may not make the six o’clock news, but your group will know exactly what is happening, when to be there, where to be, who is affected, why the change, how to confirm receipt and they’ll say WOW! what a great communicator you are!
For more examples and detailed ideas, goto www.onecallnow.com
PPS… A phone message is NOT the place to emulate a TV broadcaster by sending a message like this… “There’s a big change coming, details at 11!”
