Google Voice
The phone number I now give out to anyone connected to my role at On the verge is my Google Voice phone number. 
It’s a phone number you can get from Google. You can sign up for free. Instead of being permanently tied to a physical phone, it is tied to your Google Gmail account. You can also sign up for a phone number using your Google Apps (Business, Education, Government) account. The numbers are each tied to a specific user if you use Google Apps.
Once you have your Google Voice phone number you can configure it to ring at your mobile, office or home phone numbers – or at all of your phones simultaneously. Better still, you can set schedules for when each phone should ring. If you work from home you might want to take business calls on week days but not on weekends. You may not want to ever take a business call on the home phone at night but you might answer a business call on you mobile phone until 9 PM.
What happens to phone calls received during a time you’ve told Google Voice to not ring you phones, or to missed calls? The calls go to voice mail. Here’s what you can get with voice mail:
- You can have an automatic transcription of the call sent to your email. The transcriptions aren’t perfect but they’re fairly good considering this is a free service.
- You can have the audio emailed to you as an attachment.
- You can access your voice mail from any phone.
- You can access your Google Voice account from any web browser. When you play back voice mails from Google Voice in your browser, you can follow along with the transcribed message. Each word is highlighted as the voice message is played back and words Google Voice wasn’t sure about are highlighted differently.
The Google Voice web view will also show a history of all calls received or made.
Most smart phones have apps for Google Voice which allow access to Google Voice functions from you smart phone. You can optionally have all missed calls to your mobile phone use Google voicemail instead of your carrier’s voice mail service.
When you answer a phone call that has been forwarded to one of your phones from Google Voice you can screen the call and decide whether to answer or not. You can create groups and have different messages and answering criteria for each group. For example, you can have phone calls from family put through to your mobile phone regardless of time of day. You can have individual greetings for clients you know and for calls from unknown phone numbers.
The best part of this needs to be re-iterated: This is free.
I once had a business phone number from GotVMail (which has since changed its name to Grasshopper – that name change alone was enough to make me quit their service.) GotVMail had some business features that Google Voice does not have. For example could make it appear as if you had multiple departments and you could create a Voice menu system with custom message to navigate your virtual phone directory – you know the type we all hate. It wasn’t a bad service but when compared to Google Voice it no longer seems to be as valuable.
If your main concern is not missing important calls and having the flexibility of taking a call from several different phones, and being able to track the history of all calls then Google Voice is a great solution and a terrific value.
