10 Great Ways To Use Google Voice
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
In this post I will be sharing 10 Great Ways To Use Google Voice to manage communication and messaging for your business. Google has been creating great free resources that you can use for your online business such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google and Calendar and now you can add Google Voice to that list. With Google Voice you get a FREE phone number that you can have ring on any phone that you choose. To get your google voice number, just go to www.google.com/voice, sign in with your Gmail account and create your account. One thing I really like is that you can select any area code and phone number, so you could be living in New York City, and use and LA area code and phone number. So let’s get right into it.
1. Set Your Google Voice number to ring on multiple phones
You can have your google voice number ring on your cell phone, your landline, and even your computer all at the same time if you wanted to. You can even customize it so that it will ring on different phones depending on the time of the day, like only having it ring on the landline in the evening for example. Or only ringing on weekdays or weekends.
2. Send FREE Text Messages.
This is a feature that I probably use the most. You can send and receive texts through your google voice number and this can be done from your cellphone, the desktop app, the mobile app, and even Gmail. The Desktop app allows you to send to multiple recipients at one time. However there is a limit to the total number of texts that you can send out in a certain period of time.
3. Screen Incoming Calls
Remember how on the original answering machines years back, yo could listen to the person leaving a message and decide whether or not you wanted to answer the call? Well Google voice works the same way. Let’s say you get a call from an Unknown Number. You could answer the phone, google voice will give you the caller’s name, then give you the option to take the call or send the person to voicemail. Here’s where it gets cool. You can then choose the option to send the person to voicemail and listen in while they leave you a message. You can even interrupt the message and talk to the caller.
4. E-mail voicemail messages to others
When your in the Desktop app for google voice, you can send the audio voicemail to your friends. Just click on the message you want in your inbox, select e-mail>recipient>add a message and click send. Pretty easy right?
5. Read your voicemails
Your voicemails are automatically transcribed by google voice. When you look at your voicemail inbox, you will see all of your messages transcribed and if your playing a message, each word in the transcription will highlight as the audio is played back. the good thing about the transcription is you it allows you to search your voicemail for a keyword, phrase, or a person’s name. You can also send the transcription as a text message or email.
6. Create Personalize voicemail greetings
You can have different voicemail greetings for different groups like like one greeting for friends and one for your kids. You could even make certain phones ring based on who’s calling. Technology boy, I’ll tell ya.
7. Record Phone Calls
Google voice allows you to record calls that you receive. You simply press 4 during the call and a voice will chime in and say “this call is being recorded.” However you can’t do this with calls that you make. Once the call is over, you can listen to the recording.
8. Make Low-Cost International Calls
You can make cheap international calls with google voice for as low as 2 cents per minute to many countries. You just have to add credits to your account which is very easy to do and you can check the rates in your google voice inbox.
9. Make Conference calls with Google Voice
You can host a conference call with up to four people. You just instruct each person to call your google voice number at a certain time and add each of them to the call by pressing 5. This is a nice feature if you need to get some information to key members of your team really quickly.
10. Listen to Your Voicemail in Gmail
When you receive a transcription in Gmail of a voicemail someone sent you, you can listen to the message right there in your gmail account. No need to open up the google voice desktop app. You will need to set this up in your voice settings.
You can literally make Google Voice your nerve center for your business and maintain great communication with your team and the best part, It’s All FREE.
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