[asterisk-users] Slightly OT: Getting VOIP number into phone book

[Lacy Moore]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:39 PM, Andrew Kohlsmith (lists)
<aklists at mixdown.ca> wrote:
> On March 25, 2008 02:15:42 pm Lacy Moore wrote:
> > I think that is one of the biggest things that businesses overlook
> > when switching to Voip.  It's hard to get in the directories.
>
> I have to say that it's been many years (well before voip) that I've gone to
> the directories.  Google and yellow pages for pretty much everything.  White
> pages if I know *exactly* what I'm looking for, but even then I tend to throw
> it in google before I go hunting for that big damned book.
>
I am the exact same way.  I don't even know where the phonebook is at
my house.  But, when one of your clients is a hardware/lumber store,
you realize how important the yellow pages still are.  Another client
is a construction company.  Five years ago they did all their work
with nationwide accounts, when we switched to XO less than three years
ago, it was no big deal.  Now, the majority of the work is local.
It's amazing how many businesses look in the yellow pages.

During this time, we got rid of what was then our "backdoor" that got
into the autoattendent.  That number was disconnected.  Even though
our number shows up in many places all over the internet, a lot of
those national accounts thought we went out of business because that
number was disconnected, including one that had previously used email
only as a means of communication (our email never changed).

People are completely 100% unpredictable!

To me, though, Directory Assistance is more important than white pages
or yellow pages, mainly because most of the people we deal with are on
their cellphones all day and not in the office.