5 Benefits of Visual Voicemail

If you’ve been in business for more than a day you understand that voicemail is a necessary evil. Sure, you’d love to be able to take every call as it comes in and be there for every customer the moment they need you, but it’s simply impossible. A virtual phone system makes this a little easier on everyone involved. First, it allows you to record personal greetings that will encourage callers to leave a message. Second, and more importantly, it provides you with a variety of options for retrieving and keeping track of these messages. One of the best ways is through visual voicemail, or voicemail transcription as it’s sometimes called. Here are just a few of the many benefits of this valuable feature.

• Time Savings – Dialing in to a voicemail and going through the endless prompts to retrieve messages is a pain in the you-know-what. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just read the message in your email or through a text? Well, you can. That’s exactly what visual voicemail is and it’s a huge time saver.
• Eliminates Confusion – Ever listen to a recorded message and end up wondering what on earth you just heard? Or how about when you can’t find a pen in time to jot down a call back number? Avoid having to replay your messages over and over to capture missed information or clarify a detail - all the info is right in front of your eyes with voicemail transcription.
• Stay Organized – Keeping track of who called when and why can be a hassle and a half, especially with the million other things you’re juggling. Because visual voicemail can be delivered to your inbox, you can organize your messages just as you would emails so you can stay on top of everything and nothing falls through the cracks.
• Manage Follow Ups – Did somebody leave a message on your voicemail that would be best dealt with by someone on your sales team? No problem. Forward the voicemail transcription right to that person for timely and professional follow-up.
• Instant Gratification – Say you’re in a meeting when that important call comes in. You know you can’t answer it but you’re dying to know what the call is about. No problem! Visual voicemail lets you read your message right from your smart phone so you know instantly (and discretely) what’s going on.

The reality is you simply cannot take every call as it comes in. With visual voicemail you can easily and efficiently retrieve, track and follow up on your important messages and better manage your communications to deliver prompt, professional service to your valuable customers.

Labels: benefits of visual voicemail, product tips, virtual phone system

The Benefits of Visual Voicemail: Seeing is the New Hearing

Voicemail as we know it has been around for a while, and it’s probably about time the whole thing got a facelift.

Sure, it’s been great for gauging different people’s take on ‘a short message’ or for providing those we’ve been trying to avoid with a less obtrusive way of pestering us—even for receiving an important communication here and there—but let’s admit it, retrieving those messages could become a hassle.

First you had to dial-in and enter a silly pin number that, for some dang reason, never seemed to stick in your head. Next, assuming you’ve managed past the four-digit gateway, you had to plough through five minutes of your mother-in-law’s daily quibbling before getting to your client’s urgent message—asking you to call back no later than 4pm and it’s now 4:05, thanks to your extended family...

If you hung up and spent a few moments counting your blessings (or simply counting to ten), and later wanted to revisit that last message, you had to go through the entire process all over again.

While this might be better than the mini-cassettes of old—it’s like telling yourself now that you should be content with a good breadknife when they’ve already invented sliced-bread.

So what’s sliced-bread for voicemail? Visual Voicemail.

Visual voicemail lets you view your VM messages in a visual sequence listed by the caller’s name, just like viewing contacts in your call-log or songs in a playlist. This gives you the freedom to selectively prioritize which messages you’re going to listen to, when, and in what order (yep, dance around Wilma all you want or simply press delete—she’ll never even know!). What’s more, there’s no need to dial in—you simply tap the voicemail icon on your smartphone (or web browser if you're using a PC) and find all your messages magically listed right there.

If that’s not enough, additional features let you forward messages, reply via SMS/MMS, and even have them transcribed to text using voice recognition technology. While this last is presently estimated at about 40% accuracy, it’s still a great auxiliary for capturing quick notes or running a search using key-words (never before possible), and will continue to improve as the technology keeps advancing.

Visual voicemail is available on most platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Win 7, and can be purchased as a value added service from your cellular provider. But if you’re already shopping around for a hosted PBX solution, it’s also included for free with Synclio’s virtual PBX, so you might as well hit two birds with one stone and keep those few extra bucks in your pocket, right where they belong.

(Note: no animals were harmed during writing of this article)

Labels: android visual voicemail, benefits of visual voicemail, business, iOS visual voicemail, phone system, telecommunications, virtual PBX, voip, what is visual voicemail, windows mobile visual voicemail