Introduction: Instant Messaging (IM) allows for real-time communication with friends and colleagues. IM is rapidly growing as a primary communications technology among corporate, educational and home users. According to many sources, IM is currently used by more than 70 percent of the computing population (both home and corporate enterprise) and will exceed 80 percent within a year. The current estimated number of IM users is over 300 million. need in the funeral home setting. If you are a “one person” operation, you need to have at least 5 other people on call in order to get everything done that you need. This is the only way to provide the ultimate experience for your families.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Will our families want to use this method to contact the funeral home? I believe without a doubt the answer is yes! You need to consider setting up this service as soon as possible. The cost to set it up is FREE. If you look in the bottom right hand corner of your computer (down by your clock) you will see a little “green guy”. You can click on the green guy to launch the MSN Messenger. If you have never used IM before you will be required to register. Simply register with your current email. Once you are registered, you can check the option to automatically sign-in when you boot up your computer. This will automatically connect you and you will be available to IM. However, in order for families to be able to talk to you, they will need to know your IM id. This will simply be the email that you used to sign-up for the service. You should post your IM id on your business cards, letter head, and website.

For step by step instructions you can follow this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307887

Once you setup your IM for the first time, you will want to add your first contact. You can go ahead and add me at your first contact: frazermatt@hotmail.com. Once you add me, send me an instant message to let me know you got the service and I’ll send back a message to you!