Google Voice for Business

One thing I hated during college was that I seemed to always have multiples of things; email accounts (personal and college), social media profiles (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), etc. This problem became much worse once I became an entrepreneur and created businesses. Now not only did I have all of my personal accounts, but I also had one for each business.

This became very difficult to manage (and I will have a series of blogs in the future on how I do manage this), but one of my biggest concerns was how to handle phone numbers for each business. As I started the real estate business, I knew that I didn't want tenants to have and be calling my personal phone number. I also knew that I could not respond with an appropriate greeting for each business if I didn't know what business the caller was calling for if I just used my cell phone number. So I brainstormed some potential options:

• Use my cell phone number for all businesses
  • Pros: Only need 1 phone, no extra cost for additional lines, can make and receive calls from anywhere
  • Cons: Everyone has my cell phone, the number is not local to the town business is done in, difficult to outsource handling of calls in the future especially since I cannot answer calls during the day
• Add a separate landline phone for each business
  • Pros: Each business has their own number
  • Cons: Need a separate phone for each number, need to pay for each number, the number is not local to the town business is done in, difficult to outsource handling of calls in the future especially since I cannot answer calls during the day, must be at home/office to make or receive calls
• Add a line to the family plan of my cell phone and have a separate phone and number for each business
  • Pros: Each business would have its own number
  • Cons: Would need multiple cell phones, need to pay for each number, the number is not local to the town business is done in
• Add a separate phone number for business using a VoIP service
  • Pros: Each business would have its own number, would be easier to outsource handling of calls in the future
  • Cons: Would need multiple phones, need to pay for each number, the number is not local to the town business is done in, must be at home/office to make or receive calls
• Create a Google Voice number for each business
  • Pros: Each business can have their own number, most towns have local numbers available, no charge for having a number or regular calls, free texting, voice message transcribe, history of all calls/voicemails/texts, calls/text can be forwarded to other numbers (ex. cell phone or house phones) at various times, calls can be made via the Internet (computer) or phone another phone (ex. smartphone with Google Voice app), can received emails/text notifications of calls
  • Cons: Need to create a Google account for each business, some local numbers may not be available

After weighing the pros/cons of each approach, Google Voice has the most pros and least cons of any approach. Below are some of the key features/processes that we use with Google Voice.

• Since Google Voice has an inbox, we can see a list of every incoming and outgoing call, voicemail and text from either our computers or smartphones
• We can make calls from either our computers or cell phone using our Google Voice number
• We can also send/receive text messages using our computers or cell phone using our Google Voice number
• We have a complete history of everything done on the number (great for a "paper trail" with problem tenants)
• We can store tenant contact information for easy access
• We forward the calls to the correct phone based on the time of day. So during the day it goes to my wife's phone, at night and weekends it goes to both of our phones
• We can make notes on each item, so it is easy to see the history (ex. My wife can note that she called someone back so I don't double call)

These are just a few of the benefits that we get from using Google Voice for our business. If you are a small business owner, I would highly recommend taking a look.