IT, Communications, google
Should You Sign Up for Google Voice? Xconomy Readers Share Their Beta Experiences
Wade Roush 6/22/09
(Page 3 of 4)
“I use it as my primary number. In fact, I actually changed my AT&T number so that it wouldn’t be called directly from people who still used my old number. I have never given my *actual* AT&T number to anybody.”
“I have not used it as much as I had expected. Most of my friends have not switched over to my new number since my cell phone number is still good. I have used it for new friends and placed it on my resume as my POC.”
“Occasionally. Whenever people call me on that number instead of my old number.”
“I have started handing out my [Google Voice number] instead of cell phone. So I use it 10-30 minutes a day.
“I did sign up but I have not made any use of it, unfortunately. I would have liked to but then work (life?) got in the way. I do plan to get back to it and exploring it further.”
Does Google Voice do what you expected?
“Absolutely. There may even be more functionality I haven’t worked with yet.”
“Yes, and more.”
“What I use it for and what i like:
* Routing all my text messages through one account and then to my cell phone
* I usually now only give out my Google Voice number, it’s on my business cards for work and a ton of other places. I love being able to screen calls and track who’s called online.
* I use a Google Voice app on my android phone (I have a G2 that I got at Google IO and it works ok with the phone).”
“It has far exceeded my expectations. One of cool features is the ability to set up multiple groups and voice mails for each different group. I particularly thought that I would get a lot of use from the voicemails. However with my phone ringing in all three locations —Home, Work, and Cell—I always have a chance to answer the phone. So I have not seen a lot of activity on the voicemail side. But hey, isn’t that the idea to be more accessible (if you want). You can just as easily not be accessible and allow much to go to voicemail. I think the listen in feature is very very cool. There are times when I don’t want to talk but am interested in the voicemail right now.”
“I did not really understand what it was until I had the opportunity to play with it, and then I did not really have use for it. I guess that I was thinking that it would be more like Skype. We use a virtual PBX at our company and Google Voice would probably be a better option for that application, but the virtual PBX numbers and system are already established at this point.”
“Oh yes. And more. It’s really rethought the way I’ve used my telephone. I can block, redirect, turn on, off, conference without going though my telco at all. It’s incredible.”
“Overall, I am happy with the service. I have not used the outbound calling feature, but the other features are nice. I especially like the message transcription service. Over the course of my use of the service, the accuracy has improved, but it is still not perfect. It has been enough for me to get the general idea of the message, which has allowed me to determine if I need to step out of a meeting, etc. to call the person back (or if it can wait).”
“Yes, it works well. The transcription needs a bit of work but is very useful. I hate listening to voicemail so it’s really a godsend.”
“Yes. It works great. The voice quality is very good. The transcription of messages is good. Both the web and mobile web interface are very nice.”
What complications or difficulties have you experienced?
“Not one.”
“At first, calls were Caller ID’ed as ‘Unavailable,’ but after changing some settings, it works just fine.”
“I use it extensively at work, I love the dialing feature. And it is great to build a database of those who call. The one difficulty is that when I go home it is not convenient to use the Web app to dial out. The time that it takes to go to the website, select the person, then have it dial you back gets pretty annoying. I was psyched when the GV Mobile app came out for the iPhone. Great app, but it too is still too time consuming when I want to call my wife or son.”
“Mostly problems regarding calling directly though the phone. One has to quickly learn to call from the Web page or the 3rd party google voice applications. The text message (406) number helps a lot.”
“When Google went down a few months ago, it played havoc with Google Voice. My wife called my number and actually got through to a stranger. This has got to NEVER happen again.” …Next Page »
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.
6/22/09 9:31 am
I tried to give my GV number to selected folks as my phone number. Old contacts never quit calling cell number I’ve had since 1995. New contacts eventually caught cell number and called it directly. Total failure. Need to exchange GV number to cell phone and old cell phone number to GV. Then GV would work as envisioned. So far, dont see a way of doing that.
Success path for me: put GV on do not disturb. Changed cell phone voice mail to point to GV rather than carrier’s voice mail. Cell phone voice mails go to GV, get transcribed and sent to email account. Pretty good tool at this point. I now use it daily. Maybe less use than Google hoped, but perfect for me.
6/22/09 10:32 am
Wade, you and your readers may be interested in Skydeck’s mashup with Google Voice:
http://skydeck.com/blog/announcements/google-voice-mashup
Skydeck addresses some of the biggest problems that you bring up. You don’t need to change your number and you don’t need to change the way you make phone calls. Right now we support Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.
Best
Jason
6/22/09 11:38 am
Wow, I wish I had scooped up one of the beta invites… I’m really anxious to try it out and have tons of uses for it as I’ve been living over in Europe for a while now and need an easier way to manage the numbers i have in the US & over here…. if anyone still has a beta invite that they didn’t activate, i’d love to put it to use! You can email me at ryan.haugarth at gmail.. I’d really appreciate it!
6/22/09 7:22 pm
i missed out on that annoucement=\. Can someone please invite me to the program or send me invite that not activate. appreciate for your help. email = speedtechnologies at yahoo.com
6/22/09 10:24 pm
I’ve been an avid Google Voice user from the day I signed up. Having used Bill Warner’s Wildfire for 15 years, I was used to the “ultimate” phone concierge with an incredible female receptionist’s voice to boot. There’s no question that the transcription feature is one of the more compelling capabilities. While it’s available with other services (SimulScribe), having it integrated out of the box (phone) is a real benefit. Truthfully, I have few, if any complaints. More than anything, I have lots of requests — like — since Google Voice has my contact list, there ought to be a way for Google Voice to initiate a call for me without my remembering the phone number through voice recognition or prompting with the first few letters of the name of the person I am calling. This was one of the beauties of Wildfire. Actually, the Google Voice designers ought to touch base with Rich Miner who was at Wildfire and ought to be able to help blend the best of both worlds! Thanks again for the beta. I love it!
6/23/09 3:18 pm
I wasn’t lucky enough to get a beta invite but from what I’ve read it doesn’t look like GV works as a main business number.
The issue I have with Google Voice is there can’t be multiple extensions associated with the account so for a small business there is no option for pick ext. 1 for Joe, 2 for Amy, etc. There are two of us at my office and we need our own voicemails. Am I missing something or am I correct on my assumption?
I’m looking into Toktumi, http://www.toktumi.com/WhyToktumi.aspx
I haven’t spoken with anyone that has used them but the feature set looks great on paper. Anyone have any experience with them? I’m thinking of giving them a try but I’d like to hear some feedback before I go down the number porting path. Thanks.
6/23/09 4:05 pm
Hi Wade:
Thanks for an excellent article on the pros and cons of Google Voice. I’m in the online phone business myself and we are all watching GV very carefully as they have the potential to eat our lunch! Some will be in trouble (e.g. SpinVox and PhoneTag sell voicemail transcription for a fee – that’s dead), others will survive by focusing on different niches. My company Toktumi may be of interest to some of your readers if they contemplate using GV for a business.
Okay here comes the shameless promotion but I wanted to share this with your readers as I thought some might find it helpful – particularly those that have decided to strike out on their own and run their own business.
Toktumi is like a professional-grade version of Google Voice, designed for businesses that don’t want to trust their calls to a free service, who need service level guarantees and live customer support. In additional to GV-like features, we offer business features like auto-attendant, 800 numbers, a PC softphone, fax, desktop sharing, and a new mobile app called Line2 launching on the iPhone in a few weeks, similar to GV Mobile.
There’s a free 30 day trial available at the toktumi website if people want to check us out.
6/24/09 7:03 pm
I have a Google Voice number. I don’t use it. Think I’ve used it once or twice since I got it over a year ago. You get what you pay for, in this case you pay nothing.
7/11/09 5:21 pm
Good, GV is awsome,i got invitation from my friend..signed it up..working great i need to learn more about it ..one solution and one call for multiple destination where ever you are there google voice will follow..dont miss it..who ever has just sign it and enjoy the service..soon world will be a local call…Thanx Rajuvamuda
7/23/09 1:26 am
Been using Grand Central before it was turned into Google Voice. I was a bit shy about giving it out to contacts as I didn’t fully understand the power but I made the switch this spring when they renamed the service. Good stuff, one of my favorite new toys this year other than the iPhone.