Need an office number but also want to be able to be in touch while out of the office? Google Voice was something I had the opportunity to join in on a few months back. I have loved the service and haven’t looked back. My home phone is gone and has been replaced with my Google Number.
It’s easy to view your calls on line and you get a local number wherever you choice. Yet the great option is that you can create calling options for specific people in your contact list or groups of people. They can receive a personalized greeting, be thrown into voice mail or passed directly to your phone. Didn’t get to the last call? Don’t worry, a text message to your phone (or an email) will let you know you received a call and send a transcript of the message and who called. Not bad. The transcript isn’t always perfect but it usually is good enough to know what the call was about and how urgent it is to get back to the caller.
Another nice feature is you can have the number forwarded to any phone or series of phones. When you picked up it will announce who is calling and give you the option of listening to them leave a message, answering it or sending it to voice mail… unless you picked the option to send it directly to you and then it answers when you pickup.
Have a personal phone but want to know when to answer with your business voice? Then have google voice come through as the google number and now you know that’s a forwarded call for your business (or campaign for all those political races).
Stay on top of it wherever you go. Something to consider. To answer your questions, I don’t work for or receive any incentive to write this. Just love the service and hope you might consider it as a free option to your otherwise expensive life.
Google Voice also lets you block calls, send, receive and store text messages, and place calls in the U.S. for free. Google’s voicemail options let you set up personalized greetings for different callers. That means mom hears a different greeting than your strategic partners and your best friend gets a different message than your top vendor. You can even share your voicemail or forward or download voicemails.
If that’s all Google Voice did, it would be enough. But you can also do conference calling, record calls and store them online, switch phones in the middle of a call, view your inbox from your mobile phone, and set up preferences by group. For example, you can click on contacts. To add a new group, you click the groups button and choose a name. Next, add the contacts you want to add to the group. Your groups could be friends, family, work or some other group.
