User's Guide to Computer Appointment Verification

Appendix B: Personalizing CAV

• Introduction
  • Preferences
  • Greeting Speech

Appendix B: Personalizing CAV

Introduction

Before you set up clients and begin making calls for them, there are a few details you will need to attend to. This includes adding the touches that make the program part of your own business. This is where you:

• Add your company name and address as you want it to appear on your invoices and reports.

• Record a universal Greeting Speech you can use for most of your clients.

• Add any standard comments that you want to print on your bills.

• Specify how many times you want a phone to ring before you hang up and place the next call.

Figure 67 - Settings Menu

Preferences

When you select the Preferences option on the Settings menu, the screen appears.

Figure 68 - Preferences screen

This is where you enter your company name, address and phone number as you want it to appear on the invoices and reports you send your clients. Any comments you place in the Billing Comments box will print on all of your bills.

This is also the place to enter the number of times you want the phone to ring before your computer hangs up and attempts another number.

To open the Preferences screen,

• Using the mouse, click on Settings, and then click on Preferences.

  or

• press Alt+S to display the Settings menu and press P to open the screen.

To set Preferences,

When you first open the Preferences screen, you will see some dummy information already in the boxes. You will need to change this to the information that applies to your business. The cursor will be in the Company Name box, with the name highlighted.

1. Type in the name of your company.

The old name erases, and your company name is in the box.

2. Use the mouse or the Tab key, select the Address 1 field. Type in the correct information.

This is the box for your street address. When you begin to type the new information will replace the old address.

3. Move to the Address 2 box using the Tab key, or the mouse and type in the second line of your address if you have one.

This box is for additional address information. The P.O. Box line should go here if you have one for your business mail. This is the line that will print second. As the Post Office reads address from the bottom to the top, they prefer that a P.O. Box appears immediately above the City, State, Zip line.

4. Move to the City, State, Zip box and type this information as it should appear.

5. Move to the Phone box and add your phone number if you want it to appear on your invoices.

6. Change the Rings (No Answer) box if you prefer a number other than the one that appears in the box.

Four rings is the typical number to choose.

7. Add Billing Comments if you have any.

This could be a statement of the terms you desire for bill payment, such as "Due 20 days from date of billing," or "Net 10". It could also be something like "Thank you for your business", or you can simply leave this blank.

8. Save by clicking on OK, or use the Tab key to select the OK box and press e.

The Preferences are saved and you return to the main program screen.

If you select Cancel, you return to the main program screen with the information in the Preferences screen unchanged.

Greeting Speech

You record the Greeting Speech once for all client calls when you first begin to use the program. You are not required to record this part of the message again, although you can change or edit it at any time if you want to.

A suggested Greeting Speech is prerecorded and supplied with your program. However, we encourage you to record the Greeting Speech again so that it will be in the same voice as the Closing speech. When you are ready to use the Computer Appointment Verification program, you should record this message or a similar one.

You will want to keep your message as generic as possible so that once you have set up the service, you will not have to spend a lot of time changing things.

A script for this message might be:

"Hello, this is an appointment verification system calling with a reminder of the following appointment . . . . . "

You access the Greeting Script screen for this part of the message by selecting Greeting Speech from the Settings menu on the menu bar. See Figure 69.

Figure 69 - Accessing the Greeting Speech

To open the Greeting Script screen,

Using the mouse, click on Settings, and then click on Greeting Speech,

or

press Alt+S to display the Settings menu and press G to open the screen.

When you open this screen, the cursor will be at the beginning of the text in the script.

Figure 70 - Greeting Script screen

The controls in the Greeting Script screen are:

OK - accepts the last recording that was made for the message. It is the same as Save.

Cancel - takes you back to the screen from which you opened the Greeting Script screen, without making any changes to the recording.

Play - lets you hear the current recording.

Record - lets you record a new message.

There is a suggested Greeting speech in this box, and it is also already recorded.

To play the Greeting Speech,

1. Click on Play, or press the Tab key until the Play button is highlighted and press e.

The Play Message screen opens.



A message in the status box instructs you to pick up the hand set.

2. Pickup the hand set of your telephone and listen to the recorded speech.

Selecting Play, will resume playing a message that you have stopped or paused.

Selecting Replay will play the speech again from the beginning.

Selecting Stop will pause or end the recording.

3. When you are through playing the recording, select OK to return to the Greeting Script screen.

You can access the Greeting Script screen using the method outlined above when you are ready to record the Greeting Script.

1. Click on Record, or press the Tab key until the Record button is highlighted and then press e.

2. Record the Greeting Speech using the method outlined in Chapter 5: The Recorded Message.

3. Click on OK when you have recorded the message and are ready to save it.

Clicking on Cancel returns you to the Greeting Script screen without saving the recording.