Visual Voicemail

[Brandon Turner]

Talk about taking caller ID to a new level!

Visual voicemail has been around for a good amount of time and discussed in great detail on ActiveRain, the real estate social network for agents, loan originators, and brokers. I know many of us here use it like we use our email: it is a staple of our lives.

As one of the greatest inventions since cash-on-cash returns, "visual" voicemail literally means you can read your voicemail messages in addition to listening to them. You know that this was unheard of years ago. On top of simply forwarding your unanswered calls to your voicemail box, visual voicemail lets you choose which individual message to read or listen to without having to run through all of them.

If you know your sender and have assigned a profile image to their address book entry, then, of course, you will see their picture as you read or listen to their message. Time and date stamps are at your fingertips rather than having to choose a menu option to get this information. You can download, share, and email the contents of your voicemail box. You can even create an audio history on your phone of every message left for you by a specific contact. This does take extra effort and depends on the application you use, but when did a record of client, vendor, or colleague communications ever hurt your business? Then again, you may have no use for that or some of these other benefits...which is fine.

If you are unfamiliar, the uniqueness of visual voicemail is that your voice messages are delivered over your carrier's data network as sound files (i.e. mp3). This is where the capabilities of downloading, listening without having to enter your PIN, reading once the message is transcribed, sharing if the message was for an associate in the office and not you, and better call screening are made possible.

Those of you with iPhones have been exposed to this function already. Those of us with Androids, Blackberrys, or Windows phones have access to a variety of solutions in our app stores--assuming visual voicemail was not pre-installed for us.

Special thanks goes to Google Voice, my visual voicemail phone app. As with any piece of software created by humans, nothing works 100% perfectly 100% of the time. It can occasionally take several minutes for a message to be successfully transcribed (turned from voice to text) and there are times when some of the transcribed message reads like gibberish. [Auto-correct issues don't happen only when we're texting]

During this wait, I will see the message "Unable to transcribe" where the name of the contact or number they call from is later displayed. Again, this only happens occasionally. Clearly, I also cannot speak for all visual voicemail applications as I have only personally used a few of them.

This brings me to 3 quick recommendations followed by 3 quick tips.

I would be surprised if you are not already familiar with (if not well-versed in) visual voicemail, its uses, and its benefits. What I do know is that your familiarity--as with any technology you use in your real estate business--depends on if and how it benefits you and helps you meet goals.

3 Recommended Visual Voicemail Apps [Available on both iTunes and Google Play]

1. Youmail: www.youmail.com

2. Google Voice: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

3. Divugle: http://www.divulgeapp.com/Main

*I've gotten the best (and most) feedback from peers, clients, and family & friends about the above 3 suggestions. *

3 Basic Tips for Setting up or Using Visual Voicemail

Note: You're a grown-up, I know. It never hurts, however, to at least mention best practices for reinforcement. Though simple to set up on most apps, being mindful of what can cause issues is helpful.

1. Visual voicemail requires call forwarding. You must allow the visual voicemail application to setup call forwarding on your phone for it to work.

2. Do not change your call forwarding settings after you install visual voicemail. If you need to change the settings, uninstall and reinstall the app.

3. If you attempt to setup visual voicemail and it isn't working, ensure call forwarding is active on your account with your carrier.

Which visual voicemail app, pre-installed or not, is your guilty pleasure? What are your thoughts on the concept of visual voicemail or your experience with it up to this point?