SMALL BUSINESS : BUSINESS TOOLS: Software, Technology and new Products to Help Your Company : Phone Software Provides New Answers

One of the great things about computers is their ability to make little businesses look like big companies. Symantec’s new $129 TalkWorks Pro Version 3.0, for example, can provide even the smallest businesses with voice mail, message notification, fax-on-demand, call tracking and faxing.

Any home office with an answering machine can have basic voice mail, but by letting a PC running TalkWorks Pro answer your phone, you can have multiple mailboxes and multiple prerecorded messages. The multiple mailbox feature lets your callers press a key to select a recipient for their message. Each person in the office can have the machine read aloud one or more messages, depending on the key the caller presses.

Because the program is integrated with incoming and outgoing fax software (Symantec’s WinFax Pro), it’s also possible to include a fax-back option. You could, for example, tell callers to press 9 if they want a price list faxed back to them. The software will then ask the caller to punch in a number and send the document.

You can also use the software to receive faxes, which are saved on a hard drive to be read on screen or printed out. You must have a dedicated line for incoming voice and fax mail, but the software can distinguish between a voice call and a fax call, so you don’t necessarily need a second line.

As with other voice-mail systems, you can retrieve your messages by telephone, but you also can listen to them on the computer. If you have a local area network, anyone in the office can check messages, assuming they’re authorized.

One cool feature of the program is called “find me.” If no one is there, the software can be configured to notify you by pager or phone that a message has arrived, or it can forward the message to another phone number. You can program the software to try up to four different numbers until it finds you.

If you subscribe to your phone company’s caller ID service, you can use the software to identify incoming callers. Unless the caller has caller ID blocked, it knows the number. If that person’s name and phone number are in your phone directory, it also knows the identity of the caller. The program logs all incoming calls, even if the person hangs up before it’s answered.

The program also can be configured to recognize and classify “special callers,” such as important clients or family members. They can get a special greeting, have their calls directed to an appropriate mailbox or trigger the “find me” notification service.

The program is easy to install and configure. In most cases it will automatically identify and configure your modem and comes with standard outgoing greetings that you can override by dictating your own greeting into the PC’s microphone.

The program’s breadth of options makes it a fairly complete solution, but you should always think twice before using a PC as an incoming fax machine or answering machine. I get a bit nervous about using a PC for this purpose. My main concern is that the computer could crash while no one is at the office, which means you won’t get any messages or faxes until it’s fixed. Of course any machine--including a standard fax machine or answering machine--can fail, but Windows PCs seem to fail more often than most stand-alone answering machines or fax machines.

Another option I’ve discussed in previous columns is to use one of the unified messaging services such as Jfax, EFax and Onebox.com that provide voice mail and fax services via the Internet for little or no cost. These services don’t have TalkWorks’ fancy “find me” and message-forwarding options, but they are easy to configure and accessible from any Internet-connected PC.

There are also plenty of digital answering machines that can provide you with multiple mailboxes and optional greetings. They don’t have all the features of TalkWorks Pro but they don’t tie up a computer, are easy to configure and are reliable.

Finally, there is the old-fashioned way of handling incoming calls. Try to have someone there to answer the phone, and, when that’s not possible, route your calls to an answering service where a real human being answers the phone. Better than any software, this can help you grow your business by establishing a personal and professional relationship with the people who call.

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Lawrence J. Magid can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.”