Like many of you, I have a voicemail problem.  I get quite a few voicemails during the course of the average day on my work phone, then I also have a personal phone that I have to keep track of as well.  There’s nothing worse than dialing your voicemail after a long meeting and hearing the automated voice say “You have eight unheard messages.  First message..” – you know you’re going to be spending some time writing down numbers, calling folks back, or just plain listening.

I was doing the same, until this thing named Google Voice came into my life:

I’ve had a Google Voice account for about six months and I’ll be honest, up until a couple days ago I didn’t use it much – mainly I used it for free text messaging.  That is, until I read a really awesome post (it gets kind of nerdy/technical, just warning), which in turn made me say to myself “I bet our agents would love this thing.. how about I make a post of my own?”

Note: This is going to be a really long post, but in the end you’ll be able to have your voicemail transcribed to text, delivered as a text to your phone or email after it’s left, and you can have a bunch of phones (bunch being a technical term for “as many as you want”) going to the same voicemail box.  Oh, and you can view and listen to those voicemails from any browser, anywhere, anytime.

It’s, you know, worth it. Big time.

Okay, so here we go.  First things first, you need to actually obtain a Google Voice account which right now is a bit of pain since it’s invite only.  Click this link to request an invite, which you should get sometime between 48hours and 2 weeks (most I’ve seen are running in the 24-48 hour range).  Once you have the invite, select the option to “Get a new Google number”, do not move your existing number to Google Voice.. yet.

Next up it will ask you to pick a number, select area code 402 and search for a number – don’t be surprised, there are no Lincoln numbers available.  There should be some Bellevue’s or Omaha, go ahead and pick one of those – remember, we’re just using this as a voicemail box for now.

Okay, you’re in – now you need to add some phones.  Click “settings” at the top right, then click the link to add a new phone – simply put in the number of the phone and a name for it, then Google Voice bring up a new window with a two or three digit code displayed.  When you hit connect Google Voice will call you and ask for that two digit number – after which the phone is setup.  Do this for all phones you want to share one voicemail box.

Now we’re going to set up Google Voice just to act as a voicemail-on-steroids.  This is the fun part, where we replace the standard voicemailbox from your carrier with Google Voice.  No more dialing in, listening to one after the other – nope, now you can actually manage your voicemail.  It’s really that good.  So, in settings you want to be on the phones tab:

You see how both of my phones are unchecked?  Make sure to do that first.  Next click the link that says “Activate Google voicemail on this phone”.  It will give you a new prompt with instructions on setting up your specific phone to use Google voicemail as it’s voicemail.

Next up, click the Voicemail & SMS tab:

Obviously right off the bat you’ll want to click “Record New” off to the right of the voicemail greeting, which will call your phone and let you add a new voicemail greeting.  Best part about this?  When someone calls you now, they won’t get the absurdly long voicemail prompts after you message – just a simple beep.

Okay, back on track.  Here’s where the really cool stuff lies.  Under “Voicemail Notifications” you can setup Google Voice to send a text transcript (yes, it transcribes the message for you, fast) as a email or text message right away.  I have mine setup just to send a text message with the transcript to my work phone, as that’s primarily what I use Google voicemail for.

Next up, make sure at the bottom to check the box next to “Transcribe Voicemails”.  Then click Save Changes, and you’re done.

Okay, so how do I actually check my voicemail?

First off, since you set it up the way I showed Google Voice will send you a text message with a transcription of the voicemail 15-30 seconds after the voicemail is left. Right there in your text you can view a somewhat accurate transcription of what they sent.  It’s, seriously, awesome.  But it doesn’t stop there.

If you are in your Google Voice inbox in your browser you’ll see what I see above in my first post – your voicemail suddenly becomes manageable like email.  See that first message?  Let’s say I want to call the Dell rep back to reschedule, I just click the “call” link, and here’s what I get:

I select which of my phones I want to ring, which at first you may wonder why – I did too.. until I forgot my work phone at work the other night.  That night I selected “iPhone” for my personal phone, and it connected me right up.  Play with it once or twice it’s really nice for those of us with multiple phones.  Or even one phone!

On my second message, Steve asked that I just text him back with my recommedation.  I can do that too, right from my Google voice inbox by clicking “SMS”:

That will send a text message straight to his phone, and I don’t get charged against my monthly allotment of texts.  Want to really have some fun?  Click the “More” link, you can email that voicemail to someone else, you can download it to your computer, or embed it into another webpage.  The other day I had a voicemail from an agent that was thanking several folks around here for good work, I had to walk to each of their desks and hold my phone up to their ear as they listened.  Now, I could just email that message to them.

And now from the “one more thing..” department:

It gets better.  Have a Blackberry or Android phone?  Click Here to download a mobile app that will allow you to manage your voicemail from an app on your mobile phone – read voicemails, listen to them.. yeah.  It’s great.  Other phones (including the iPhone, thanks to the ridiculousness of AT&T) can use a pretty nice web interface to view it:

Remember where we were setting up Google Voice to send text messages and emails of certain notifications to certain phones or email addresses?  Here’s my Quick Tip Of The Day: you can change those phones or email addresses on the fly.  So if I knew I was going to be outside of Sprint coverage, but would have AT&T coverage – I could set Google Voice to send notifications to my personal phone.  If I knew I wouldn’t have either phone, but might have a computer – I could send it to my email.  Just check the box, save the setting and go.  It’s really that easy.

Okay, we’re done.  There’s lots more to it, so if I went too fast feel free to stop by the Orwell office and I’ll be happy to demo it for you, or help you get it setup (after you get the invite code, of course). Enjoy, and remember to shoot the helpdesk an email if you need help with this or any other issue.