Most of our users are not geeks. They can turn on computers and use them to accomplish things, but when it comes to changing domain rights or networking computers together, they're lost. And they should be; that's not their area of expertise. So we in the Support Department at Inphonite often find ourselves speaking with geeks who have been brought in for a specific purpose: to troubleshoot the things that non-geeks don't have the time or desire to try to figure out.

IT consultants are a great resource. They often are involved in the installation of our products, or in troubleshooting some mysterious problem that all-of-a-sudden cropped up. In those situations, your geek needs to talk to our geek, and soon. Of course, the support engineers at Inphonite can sometimes seem a little hard to reach, and the smallest delay seems like hours when you're paying someone $65 an hour to be there.

Most software vendors — including Inphonite — make their support representatives available for scheduled appointments. Quite frankly, this is the best way to make sure that a geek here is available for your geek there. Since you probably have to schedule time with your IT person, schedule time with our support engineer at the same time. This way, you can have the peace of mind knowing that everyone who needs to be involved in your installation process or in troubleshooting your mysterious issue will be available. No calling in a panic needed. And no paying someone $65 an hour to sit by the phone playing solitaire.

Occasionally, we speak with customers who find themselves faced with a dilemma: They need to record (or re-record) a ReminderPro message, but the room where the computer is located is noisy and not suitable for recording professional messages. Certainly, we want the messages we deliver to our clientele to be of a high quality, and background noise doesn't meet the standard.

In this situation, we often suggest using alternative software and a microphone for the recording of the ReminderPro messages. You see, ReminderPro stores each message in two WAV files located in the ReminderPro program directory. For example, the greeting for the Daily message says "Hello, this is...", and is stored in a file named daily.wav. The closing is the portion of the message that says "Press 1 to confirm your appointment...", and is stored in a file named ^daily.wav. You can use other software to record the greeting or the closing for your message, and then drop the file into the ReminderPro directory, replacing the existing file. ReminderPro will then use the recording you made elsewhere for the message.

There are a couple of gotchas here. First, the recording needs to meet certain specifications. The specs necessary for ReminderPro to use the file(s) are as follows:

• Channels: Mono
• Bit Rate: 128 kbps
• Sample Rate: 8 khz
• File Format: Wave Sound (.WAV)

Secondly, the files must be named correctly. So, if you have a message named Daily, there must be a daily.wav and a ^daily.wav file located in the ReminderPro directory. If they're not there, the program won't find them and, thus, can't play them when calls are made. The name of the message determines the names of the files.

Now, you may already have voice recording software you can use. If not, there is a plethora of them. Personally, I have used Audacity, which is free. It allows you to make recordings that meet the requirements. If recording directly through ReminderPro won't work for you, Audacity could be an option you'll want to consider.

If there are other freeware packages you like, please share your suggestions here.

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ReminderPro and InphoniteVoice are compatible with Skype for SIP, now in open beta.

In addition to Skype, other SIP providers supported by Inphonite include Verizon, VoiceEclipse, Broadsoft, Sylantro, Level 3, Quest, and GlobalIP.  A knowledgebase article on VoIP support for Inphonite products can be found here. 

Inphonite Technical Support is dedicated to providing the best customer service possible. One of the tools we use to make our support team more effective is Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, which allows us to remotely connect to our clients' computers and troubleshoot issues that might occur, or perform trainings and installations.

If you are a new client or have installed our software to a new computer, we would like to invite you to get Live Meeting installed and working before you actually need support. Having a working installation of Live Meeting now simply expedites our assistance when you really need it.

To help you get Live Meeting installed and working, we have published an article on our Knowledgebase. This article walks you through the installation of Live Meeting and then helps you test your installation to make sure it works.

If you have trouble installing Live Meeting, you might want to review the system requirements for the program, and make sure that the computer used for ReminderPro meets the specs.

We hope this helps you get ready for support — before you need it!

•    Let the patient suggest the appointment time
•    Call to confirm upcoming appointments
•    Establish a priority list of patients who will come in if a last-minute opening occurs
•    Track offenders
•    Overbook
•    Charge patients who don’t call to cancel
•    Look within for the cause (Is your practice doing something to cause more no-shows?)