Telephones make me crazy. I receive too many calls and I have too many numbers: office, home office, home, cellular, and pager, not to mention an equal number of PINs and access codes. Add to that an unpredictable schedule, and anyone trying to reach me goes crazy, too.
But now there is an antidote to this phone madness. It's Wildfire, a voice-recognition phone system that manages both incoming and outgoing calls. Wildfire captures the names of incoming callers and then calls me (it knows all my numbers and my schedule), tells me who is on the phone, and offers me the option of accepting the call or taking a message. If I opt for the latter, Wildfire apologizes to the caller and captures the phone number and message. If Wildfire can't reach me (I can set my schedule to "unavailable"), it will send a text message to my pager indicating the particulars of the call. Later, I simply tell Wildfire to give my callers a buzz - I don't need to hear their numbers, much less punch them in on the phone.
Wildfire may sound like a "receptionist in a box," but the comparison is misleading: in some instances, Wildfire completes tasks a human receptionist couldn't possibly accomplish. Reaching fellow Wildfire users is a case in point. In a typical example, I asked Wildfire to "call Bob," and it connected me with Bob, who also uses Wildfire, a moment later. Wildfire found him making a call from a pay phone at the San Diego airport, came onto the line, whispered to him that I was calling, and offered to put his first call on hold. After we talked, he went back to his other call.
Wildfire also transforms the process of returning calls. Once I connect with Wildfire, I never have to hang up between calls, much less fuss with phone numbers. I used to routinely run a backlog of 30 to 50 unanswered messages. Since switching to Wildfire, my backlog has shrunk to an unstressful 4 to 5 messages. But stress relief comes at a price. I'd be surprised if Wildfire isn't eventually made available through service bureaus catering to individual customers, but today the only option is an in-office system costing in the neighborhood of US$50,000, or slightly more than a conventional PBX/ voicemail combo. McCaw (the Cellular One folks) just invested in Wildfire; let's hope they decide to bundle the service with the phones they sell as well.
Wildfire: Systems beginning at US$50,000. Wildfire Communications Inc., Lexington, Massachusetts: +1 (617) 674 1590 or for a free demo call (800) 945 3347, e-mail: info@wildfire.com.
STREET CRED
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