I created this tutorial for my journalism cohort.
Google Voice is a limber and free solution for small business owners, freelancers, and indpendent contractors who want to have a phone number separate from their mobile number and don't want to pay for an additional phone bill.
I have given the very basic explanation of why it might be useful, along with some of its limitations.
As I went through the process myself, I tried to catch all the screenshots, but I'm sure I forgot some. Google will undoubtedly change their look and process as well, so how this ages remains to be seen. Use it as a guideline. I am not affiliated in Google other than being utterly dependent upon it for my email like the rest of the globe.
In this tutorial, I did not exploit all of the features remotely. Google is Google: they have great tutorials, and might I suggest you avail yourself of them!
Happy free business communications!
1. Google Voice
You need Google Voice
What is Google Voice?
Features
Carriers
Sign Up
Install Mobile App (iPHone)
This is not a comprehensive guide. It is
heavily flavored in favor of iPhone.
You will learn how to:
set up a Google Voice account with an
existing Gmail account, install a mobile
app for your iPhone smartphone. If you
have a Droid, GTS (Google that ‘stuff’)
Created by Kaley Perkins for NMJMA April
2013 Cohort. All rights reserved.
2. You need Google Voice:
You are a business person.
You want to protect your privacy.
Your business needs a phone.
Now you have a personal phone AND a
business phone.
Don't have two phones and two voicemails.
Too much management.
Too much money.
Get Google Voice.
3. What is Google Voice?
GV is an add-on Google feature that lets
you manage multiple phone lines.
GV syncs voicemails, texts, and emails
and lets you manage them in the
dashboard of you Google account.
GV is free.
GV is portable – no new # if you move.
GV makes all communications mobile.
GV works with all carriers, Big Guys best.
4. Features:
Personalized greeting
Transcription
Share voicemails
Text
Conference calls
Select a customized number (all sorts of
fun to play with!)
Customizable feature
5. Features: VOICEMAIL
consolidates your voicemail
transcribes voicemail to searchable text
transcribed voicemail is texted and
emailed
you don't have to listen to your voicemails
– you can read them
configure this to suit you
6. Features: TEXTS
Send texts from any number
Send texts from Gmail or mobile
Receive texts for all your numbers
Receive texts as texts and Gmail
Text & emails are word searchable in
Gmail
8. Features: CALLING
Call clients from email or mobile phone.
Control the number your customer sees.
Record calls, not yet reliable for phone
interviews
Check applicable privacy laws
9. Carriers
Verizon
Sprint
AT&T
Virgin (full of friction according to forums)
T-Mobile (call forwarding buggy
according to forums)
10. Challenges
Many choices for configuring – can
overwhelm.
Porting phone numbers,
Many preferences, many decisions.
Call forwarding is buggy on smaller
networks (Sprint smoothest)
To use via mobile phone, additional
iPhone App or Droid App must be
downloaded and configured.
19. Installing Mobile App (iPhone)
(I don’t have a Droid phone.)
There are a couple of different apps.
Check reviews (read reviews vs. trusting star
rating: three ratings at a five and 1000 at a
three and a half can be the difference
between someone’s friends rating a brand
new, untested app and genuine field testing )
Look for later versions, they have been tested.
But don’t trust them automatically: some
updates can break what didn’t need fixing!