Have you ever called a company, only to be greeted by a taped message that sounded like a portion of the soundtrack from the movie Night of the Living Dead? That’s hardly the problem at Allegheny Power Products, in the Collinwood neighborhood.
Call the owner, Tony Viola, and you’ll be greeted by the nearest thing in American telephony to Dick Vitale’s hyperactive sportscasting riff. “Yooouuu’ve reached Tony, at Allegheny Power Products. Please leave your name and number, so that I can take immmmeeeeeediate action on your call … I’m looking forward to speaking with you, iiiiinn person, veeerrry soon.”
Eventually, we did get through, and inquired: Why the voice mail greeting on steroids?
“I started my company in my basement with two credit cards. Now, we have 22 people,” he says. Since he started so modestly, “I figured the one thing we could do is answer the phone with some zest. With some companies, you call, and they sound dead.”