There are a bewildering number of options to solve a small business owner's telephone / voice-mail issues. When doing your research (which you should BEFORE you start your marketing, as this field changes CONSTANTLY) search using "Unified Messaging" and "Virtual PBX" solutions and "Live Answer" or "Live Operator" meta tags.
Below is a copy of some of the better research that's been done on this subject. I give it to my students when they are ready to setup their corporate voicemail systems. There are several articles, so don't just read the first one and quit.
Depending on your budget and marketing strategies you may seriously want to consider a service like Voice Connect or PatLive. That said, "live operator" services usually run about $1/min.
Full-time investors LOOOOOOVE receiving a call from someone who's just left 2 or 10 voice-mails at "SLICK RICK'S GALACTIC HOMEBUYING EMPIRE!! (announcer voice) Please leave a message. BEEEEEEP!". By the time they talk to me they are so motivated it's like shooting fish in ....
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Google Voice vs Grasshopper
by Chad Lawie,
August 26, 2011
Unless you
want to be tied to your desk all day, you need a way for important calls to reach
you on your mobile. The now outdated solution was to forward calls to your cell
on the way out of the office. But then you run into the hairy situations of not
being able to easily distinguish between personal and business calls,
forgetting to
set the forward, only having one voicemail greeting, etc.
It was only a
matter of time before services were created to address this common situation.
Two services stand out as major players in this field: Google Voice (get your
beta invite here) and Grasshopper. Both
help to elegantly handle the problem of juggling multiple phones numbers and
needing to be two places at once.
Both allow you to add multiple existing phone
lines to your account so that all phones ring when the number is called. Both
allow you to access your voicemail online. Both give you voicemail transcripts.
In many ways, they are quite comparable.
For business
owners, Google Voice offers the distinct advantage of being free but little
else over Grasshopper which caters exclusively to that market (plans start at
$9.95/month). For instance, Grasshopper allows for transferring to other
extensions in the account and an auto-attendant and company directory. Key
features if you are trying to communicate professionalism and not have callers
feel like they are calling some guys cell phone (they may be, but they don’t
need to know that). Grasshopper also allows you to transfer an existing number
(Google Voice doesn’t currently but is rumored to be working on this).
That
Grasshopper is a superior solution for the typical business owner is almost a
given when you look at the featureset and reasonable pricing. However, I use
Google Voice and will probably continue to do so simply because I have already
invested in a vPBX system that works well for our company. Were I to start
over, I might give Grasshopper more serious consideration because it is
considerably cheaper than our current solution and offers almost identical
functionality but at this point I’d hate to fix what isn’t broken.
Given that,
Google Voice does everything that I need. When people call our 800 # and dial
my extension, it rings my cell and my desk phone simultaneously. If I don’t
pick up the call, it transfers the callers to one of two voicemail greetings.
If it is a personal contact, it sends them to a personal greeting. If it is a
business call or any caller that is not a known contact, they get my business
greeting. If I’m at my desk, I can choose to pick up the call on my cell or my
desk phone. No need to remember to forward, no need to dial in to my work line
to listen to voicemails.
This is all I need. Problem solved. But, for clients
who haven’t yet tied themselves to a PBX solution, I’ll be recommending
Grasshopper which truly is a small business owner’s dream solution.
RingCentral and Grasshopper
Formerly GotVMail, Grasshopper comes as a new phone service that lets entrepreneurs and
small businesses manage their calls, faxes and messages. It offers local and
toll free numbers to its subscribers, as well as call features designed to
provide convenience and functionality to the phone system.
Features include call forwarding, unlimited extensions, mobile and
online management, Internet fax, advanced voicemail and more. These are all
included in each of the three pricing plans Grasshopper offers. Aiming to cater
to all kinds of businesses with different budget ranges, Grasshopper plans
start at $9.95 a month.
RingCentral, on the other hand, has a more diverse set of pricing
plans and products. Users may get a mobile business phone system or a more complete set with IP phones. Depending on the
budget and the needs of a small business, pricing plans may include an
unlimited number of extensions, or a certain number of virtual extensions to
give to a smaller team.
RingCentral unifies the existing phone lines and other communication
devices of an office or business, including fax, voicemail and email. Its
virtual PBX package includes toll free and local numbers, Internet fax,
voicemail, unique call forwarding features and sophisticated call management.
Businesses that need fax capabilities would get more from
RingCentral. While you can receive faxes through your Grasshopper number, it
has limited sending capabilities. RingCentral, on the other hand, has a
comprehensive fax service which enables users to easily and intelligently
handle fax documents in different ways such as the Internet and their mobile phones.
The choice between Grasshopper and RingCentral will depend on the
features that a business needs for its telecommunications system, as well as on
the budget that it has. Grasshopper has affordable plans which are ideal for
startups and home offices. RingCentral, on the other hand, has pricing plans
which are complete in features and capabilities fit for an office with branches
in different locations.
Phonebooth
Free: An Alternative to Google Voice for Small Businesses
March 10, 2010 by Christina Warren
In November, Phonebooth.com
released the beta version of Phonebooth OnDemand, which is a full-featured
phone service that lives in the cloud, but can communicate with both cellular
phones and IP desk and conference phones. Today, that service undefined which costs $20
a month per user undefined is becoming generally available. Phonebooth.com is also
leveraging its own private VoIP network to launch Phonebooth Free, a free
version of its hosted phone system, which is very similar to Google Voice but aimed at
small businesses.
Phonebooth.com is a product from Bandwidth.com. While Bandwidth.com might not be
as well-known as players like Comcast, Verizon and Cisco, in the business VoIP
space it’s a pretty big player. Bandwidth.com has its own VoIP network and
because of that has more flexibility over pricing, which is one reason the
company can launch products like Phonebooth Free.
A problem that a lot of small businesses face undefined especially
businesses that have employees located all over the country undefined is deciding on a
phone system. On the one hand, the investment into a PBX system is often an expense
that just can’t be justified in the beginning. On the other hand, having
everyone use their own cell phones can appear unprofessional undefined especially if
you are a customer-facing company.
Services like Grasshopper
exist and they offer a low-cost way to get features like auto-attendant (press
1 to reach Jenny in Accounting) and call forwarding, but even they have a
minimum monthly pricing plan.
Phonebooth
Free is, from what I can find, the only free VoIP-based phone system that will
give you a local number with up to five extensions, offer call forwarding to
multiple sources, voicemail with transcription, and the ability to let users
connect with you from the web (like the Google Voice widget) for free.
