Author Topic: Auto reply for iPhone?  (Read 983 times)

cpa cat

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Auto reply for iPhone?
« on: April 04, 2020, 05:37:53 PM »
I have been taking steps to try to get clients to stop calling me and texting me on my personal cell phone. I made the mistake of including it on my old business card, so many people still have it or have it programmed into their phones. I have already taken the step of changing my voicemail to notify callers that they've reached my personal cell and to call the office line or email me with business matters. A stunning number of people ignore it.

Even worse are the text messages. Text messages on my personal cell phone are not a great way for me to receive tax information, and yet a lot of people will insist on taking photos of their tax documents and texting them, or texting me with tax questions, asking for call backs, etc.

With all the stimulus/SBA stuff, I have gotten at least 10-20 text messages per day to my personal cell phone (in addition to another 5 or so callers who ignore the voicemail message and leave their questions on voicemail - but I generally delete those, since the voicemail message is clear), asking for help with SBA loans. A lot of photos of SBA loan apps with questions about how to fill out certain lines. These are problems my staff could easily help them with if they called the office line.

I've tried turning an autoreply on that says due to high volume, I am no longer able to accept business related text messages to my personal cell phone, and to call the office or email. But it only works if I manually set my phone to "DND - Driving." The moment I need to actually use my phone, it takes it off driving and people can text me again without getting the message. Also, ironically, it turns off the DND when it connects to Bluetooth in my car, when I am actually truly driving.

I've tried to find an app that would easily take over an automatic text reply, but I am having trouble finding one. It seems to exist for Android, but any apps that purport to do it for iPhone are basically 1 star apps.

Any suggestions for apps that might work? I already intend on changing my personal cell phone number and converting this one to a secondary office number, but right now that's not feasible.