In a odd twist of fate, when we got our business phone number 3 years ago, it just happened to be one number different than Duke Neurology. Their number starts 668 and ours starts 688. Easy mistake, right? In fact, it’s such an obvious error that after a few calls about some rather disturbing symptoms, I guessed what number they were trying to dial and did a reverse-lookup. Also, for those playing along at home, Neurology and Neural9 are similar enough that when we answer the phone, the casual observer doesn’t realize they have called the wrong place.

I seriously could not have done a better job of confusing people if I had planned it.

So for 3 years, we have been answering wrong number calls for Duke Neurology and getting every reaction from disproportionate anger towards us for not being the right number to just ignoring us and proceeding to schedule their appointment. We’ve had countless requests for us to transfer them. And if we got a micro-payment every time someone immediately called right back, we could start a side business.

Therefore, we are going to do what companies like us should do—something completely different. We aren’t just changing our number; we are switching to Google Voice. There are several reasons why this service is such a good fit for us. Chief among them is that we don’t really generate a lot of phone traffic; we mostly communicate with our clients through email.

So, on we go to Google Voice and our new number, (919) 533-4581. We look forward to years of explaining, “No, that’s 5-5-3″.