I used RingCentral for several years to manage the stream of business calls I receive. Now I use Google Voice as my main business line, it is cheaper (free) and has all of the features my small real estate appraisal company needs.
With Google Voice, you can easily mange your calls and voicemail, people can reach you no matter where you are , and the voicemail transcripts, while not perfect, can save you a lot of time.
Here are the 3 things I love about Google Voice and why it will be the independent contractor’s Best Friend Forever!
Click here if you can not see the embedded video above.
Think about all of the small businesses, independent contractors, and individuals in the service industry that use their cell phone as their business line. It is a huge number and Google Voice could be a great solution for managing their phone calls.
Google voice allows you to to use certain features with your existing phone number, or you can set up your own Google Voice number for free and have access to even more great features!
Google Voice offers the ability to route any incoming call to any phone or straight to voicemail. You can even create custom voicemail greetings based on the caller. Other features that Google Voice includes are: the ability to set up office hours, searchable voicemail, ability to send SMS messages, free automated voicemail transcription, email and SMS notifications of voicemails, call screening, listen in, call recording, conference calling, and call blocking.
Google Voice has a Gmail-like interface that can be used to search for past messages, keep a backup of all of your text messages, and otherwise helps to organize the stream of information you receive over your phone.
Apple rejected the Google Voice iPhone app. That doesn’t really matter now because Google released a webapp for the iPhone.
According to TechCruch:
It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone’s address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser.
You can request a Google Voice invite from Google by visiting their Request an Invite page.
Blissful Links of the Week 11/20/2009
How To Integrate The iPhone Compass With Google Maps
Stream Live Video with Ustream’s Live Broadcaster iPhone App
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Google Voice is amazing!!! I use it and I am extremely happy with the service. It’s so handy to use. I have never actually passed out my Google number though, but I like that I have that option available. There are also some podcasting capabilities available with it since you can embed messages you leave. The only downfall is that messages are at three minutes maximum I believe.
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