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How Google Voice Could Change Your Business

Google recently announced the launch of Google Voice, a service that offers a number of phone features that should be of interest to you for your business. Google Voice allows you to use one single phone number to be reached at any of the different phones that you have. Moreover, Google Voice has a terrific system for transcribing and archiving all calls and messages so that you can store information received through your phone. This system has many terrific implications for businesses. Additionally, it points to the fact that the world is moving in the direction of true unified communications which is something that your business should really get in on the ground floor of if you want to be as productive as possible in your work.

Google Voice has two main aspects of its service. First is that it offers you the opportunity to be reached at any of your phone numbers through the use of one phone number that will follow you for life. This means that you can set up the system so that calls placed to that single number can reach you on multiple cell phones and landlines including personal and business phones which means that you no longer have to worry about who can reach you where or which number to give out to new contacts and it also reduces the printing required on your business cards!

More important than the one-number-for-life service that Google Voice offers is the unique system that it offers for recording and storing information received through your phone. Google Voice is set up with a speech-to-text transcription function that takes all of your voice messages and voice conversations and converts them to text. This text can then be stored in the online system that links to your mobile phone service. You can access this system through your PC or your mobile web and search for information stored in the text there.

This service offers many terrific applications for businesses. Imagine that you receive a voice mail message providing you with directions to a meeting. Two months later, you need to go to a meeting at the same location but you can’t remember where it is. Because the voice message has been transcribed into text, you can head to your online portal and use relevant keywords to search for the message in order to get that information and make it to your meeting. You save time because of the convenience of the search system. However, convenience isn’t the only reason that your business would benefit greatly from a system like Google Voice. These archived messages are a solid record of the information that has been exchanged via phone. This means that disagreements about what was said during business conversations can now be easily resolved. This can save a lot of time and money in terms of legal fees and other business hassles that evolve from disputes about miscommunication on the phone.

Google Voice puts us one step closer to true Unified Communications. The goal of all Unified Communications is to streamline all different forms of communication as much as possible in order to increase business productivity. By offering a single phone number for all calls and messages and a method of integrating cell phone information with PC-stored information, Google Voice is a leap forward in the UC trend. Businesses seeking to make the most of this way of the future would do well to look into initial services like Google Voice to see how it’s all going to work.