Contact Me! One Tool Does it All - Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Broker

Contact Me! One Tool Does it All

A busy real estate professional usually has 2 or 3 different phone numbers for clients to reach them, as well as personal phone numbers. Most clients will usually only call one number and may or may not leave a message, meaning potential lost leads and lost business. With Google Voice you can keep and manage all your numbers in one application. You simply have to create a Google account, if you don't already have one, and the best part is that it's free!

Google Voice has an amazing array of features to make your life easier:

Choose Your Phone Number: Choose a new Google Number with whatever area code you want or use your existing mobile number. (This may mean signing a new contract with your mobile phone carrier, so make sure you check into it before proceeding.)

One Number Rings All Your Phones: Choose options to ring all your phones at once when a call comes in or choose in which order your phones are contacted.

Personalized Greetings: You can create groups for buyers, sellers, co-workers, etc., to help optimize communications and then record different greetings for each group. You can create a more personal one for friends and family.

Free text Messages! Text messages will be sent to your phone as well as to your Google account online

Free transcription of voicemail: Your voicemail will show up in your inbox, along with a transcription of the message. This is great for checking messages during meetings and other situations where listening to a voicemail isn't possible. And with a Gmail account you can filter your messages to go into a special folder so you can quickly search your voice messages.

Listen to your voice messages from your inbox! Google has a Voice Player gadget that lets you listen to your voicemail from your inbox!

Share voicemails on email. Mom calls to invite you and your significant other to dinner tonight. Quickly share the voice message by email from your Google account

International calls for pennies a minute. It even tells you how much it will be depending on location.

Block callers from your Google inbox. Keep getting unsolicited phone calls from a salesperson? After you block them from your Google number, they will get a disconnected recording.

Screen callers: Do you fondly remember your old answering machine when you could listen in on messages being left for you? Goggle Voice offers a feature where you can choose to answer the incoming call or send it to voice mail and listen in. Then, at the touch of a button, you can opt to join in, if you want.

Record Calls: Need to remember the details of your phone call? Simply pressing "4" during the conversation will record the call and notify everyone that the conversation is being recorded.

Conference Calls: Have the participants call your Google number and when they call in, you will be asked whether to let them join in the conference call.

Do Not Disturb: Google Voice allows you to set your account to "Do Not Disturb" for a predetermined length of time. During that time, calls to your Google number will go straight to voicemail.

Call or Text from your browser: Simply log-in to your Google account and click on the Call or Text buttons below the Google Voice logo and you can send a text or make a phone call and Google will call your number when the call is connected.

Add a Call Widget to your Website! Again, the goal here is to make it easy to get ahold of you. The Google Voice Call Widget is easy to embed to your website or blog enabling visitors to click the widget and enter a name and number and Google voice will connect the call.

Free App! Google Voice has a free app for the Android, iPhone & Blackberry mobile phones and any calls made through the mobile app displays your Google telephone number, not your personal cell phone number.

How have we managed without this? As with any new gadget, a smart consumer researches the product before "buying" it. Yes, this one is free, but a good rule of thumb is to look at the help center or help forum of the Google Voice website to learn about any potential problems or glitches that may occur.

Have you tried Google Voice? Please leave comments below to let us know how it's working for you!

photo credit: LuisMacalinao