phone

Is Google Voice right for you?

by   |  June 25th, 2010
Customer Service, Freelancing, Tips-n-Tools


 

 
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About a year ago, one of the early invites to Google Voice showed up in my inbox. It didn’t take long for me to get excited about the possibilities of a phone number in the cloud. But after making only a few test calls, I let it sit idle for almost a year. Yes, I am a digital hoarder.


That was until this week when Google opened up GVoice to everyone. With it ready for wide release, I thought I’d dust off my account and see if Google could sell me on it this time.


I think it has. Last summer, I saw potential at home where my wife and I had recently dropped our landline. Making use of GVoice’s call forwarding to multiple lines, we could still offer a single phone number with family voicemail while only carrying our cell phones. While that may have it’s uses, it wasn’t enough for me to adopt the service.


But for the solopreneur, the features become more rich. I’m not a proponent of acting bigger than you are. On the other hand, I think we can agree there’s no harm in a little more professionalism. Like shaving. Daily. Or giving your business a dedicated line, as opposed your cell phone. GVoice gives you the ability to truly control your business telephone communication. It’s a (mostly) clean break. You can use the messaging to speak directly to your business audience, not them AND your friends, family, or the guy picking up the free couch you put on Craiglist.


So now your customers, prospects, vendors, and contractors have their own number. And your business voicemail sounds all professional and stuff. But it gets better. In GVoice, you can assign callers to groups. If you want all your regular clients to have their own message, or ring to a certain phone, do it. Even make it a more personal experience by addressing the specific company or individual in the recording.


The feature list rolls on. Rather read your messages? Google transcribes them (though this feature still needs some work in the accuracy department). Annoying sales calls? Mark them as Spam and never see them again. Then, try saving some money on texts and use GVoice to send them.


There’s much more to be found if you sign up. And it’s free. For the solopreneur, I think it offers great value by managing your business line as it’s own entity and giving your customers a better experience in the process.


Will you use Google Voice for your business? How?

Matt Riopelle

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Reader comments (1)

 

I reserved my Google Voice number a couple days ago (or whenever it went officially public), and have been wondering how I could put it to good use. Sharing it with clients—who would get their own voice mail greeting—is not a bad idea. It’s a great idea.

One other thought I had today would be for a client web project that Ron and I will be releasing any day now (future blog post!). The “client” is sort of a quasi organization within another nonprofit, but doesn’t yet have the infrastructure set up to handle inquiries from clients. Google Voice would allow us to advertise a unique number for clients to call, which would then route to a handful of people who will be sharing the responsibility of fielding those inquiries. This would allow us to bypass the parent nonprofit, which really doesn’t need to be in the mix.

I tested GV out this afternoon and was impressed with: A) receiving a link to the voicemail via email; and B) receiving a text on my cell phone with a partial transcript of of the voicemail. Cool stuff.


Jeff Jimerson | June 25, 2010
 


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