Virtual Offices
Will Google Voice Overtake Virtual Offices?
Published March 12th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
Google is moving into new territory with an innovative product that could give virtual offices a run for their money.
Although Google isn’t offering reception services and premier address, the search engine giant is offering what it calls Google Voice. It’s an application that’s designed to help you better manage your voice communications.
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In a nutshell, the new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail and archive and search all of the text messages you send and receive. The latter might not be all that important to you, but searching your voicemail transcripts can be a life saver if you’ve deleted the messages off your phone and need a telephone number or some other bit of information someone left on your voicemail.
Low-Cost International Calls
Google Voice also lets you make low-priced international calls and quickly access Goog-411 directory assistance. If you haven’t tried GOOG-411, you should check it out. It’s a voice-activated feature that lets you say where and what you are looking for and get a direct dial to the business you are calling – and it’s free!
But I digress. Google Voice offers you one number for all your calls. That means you hand out one number to friends, family and colleagues and it can be routed to your home phone, cell phone or other business number.
You can tap into features like call screening, and you can listen in before taking a call. By that I mean it lets you listen to voicemail messages as they are being recorded like an old fashioned answering machine. You can pick up the call while they are leaving the message if you choose to.
Personalized Greetings
Google Voice also lets you block calls, send, receive and store text messages, and place calls in the U.S. for free. Google’s voicemail options let you set up personalized greetings for different callers. That means mom hears a different greeting than your strategic partners and your best friend gets a different message than your top vendor. You can even share your voicemail or forward or download voicemails.
If that’s all Google Voice did, it would be enough. But you can also do conference calling, record calls and store them online, switch phones in the middle of a call, view your inbox from your mobile phone, and set up preferences by group. For example, you can click on contacts. To add a new group, you click the groups button and choose a name. Next, add the contacts you want to add to the group. Your groups could be friends, family, work or some other group.
The only catch is this: The service will be available initially to existing users of GrandCentral, a company Google acquired in July of 2007. But eventually Google will roll this out to the wider population. Would you use it?
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Bill Brookshire March 12th, 2009 at 10:05 am
You’ve got to give it to Google. Whether or not Google dips into the virtual office market depends on whether that ‘one number’ is an 800 number or not. I think if it is, this is the way to go for a lot of companies. Free calls and low-cost international calls are far too compelling to ignore. I’d use it.
Rob Zeus March 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I would definitely use this. I see no downside, other than perhaps how good it works. Skype doesn’t always work well, and this looks like Skype on steroids. But if Google has the quality, which is more likely because they acquired the backphone technology, Google could really offer some strong competition for virtual office providers. Or else virtual office providers might have to do something similar to compete. Like you said, Google still isn’t offering premier addresses — and they don’t give you access to conference rooms.
Marcus Hester March 12th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
It looks like Google is aiming more at the telcos than the virtual offices, but I can definitely see implications here for both industries. Googe has a way of shaking things up. Smart virtual offices would look to partner with Google and let the search company make its money on whatever advertising play it puts against this.
Maggie Correta March 12th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Leave it to Google. I think Bill has a great point. If it’s an 800 number, this is really going to shake things up in the virtual office market. If you can choose various local numbers, that might also make an impact. But with Google things tend to move slow. This is not even widely available yet. We’ll have to wait and see the impact on virtual office providers and 800 number companies.