Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Another Reason To Use PhoneFusion Voice Mail

Some time ago I wrote about how PhoneFusion voice mail, was voice mail done right. Well, today I found another reason I'm glad I depend on them.

At about 8:30am I reached for my cell phone to call a client. Hmmm, it wasn't at my desk. Nor was it upstairs attached to its charger. In fact, it was nowhere to be found. D'oh - I had given it to Shira to hold on to it while I went for a run in the rain. Of course I never asked for it back, and so it's safely sitting in her purse at her office.

I don't get a whole lot of calls, but the ones I do get are from clients and are more often than not critical. So what the heck was I going to do? Well, it occurred to me that I could just log into PhoneFusion.com and see any new voice mail there.

And sure enough, the strategy works perfectly. I can not only get to new voice mails, but can also listen to ones that have already been downloaded to my phone.

A Bonus For Forgetting My Phone

While poking around the PhoneFusion site I realized they offer a free notification service. I dropped in my e-mail address, and called my cell phone. Sure enough, a minute later I got e-mail telling me the voice mail had been received and even included the .wav file attached to the message.

This is actually an especially useful feature. It means a couple of things:

  1. I can archive and tag voice mails clients leave me right along with their e-mail messages. I'm a huge fan of having a paper trail for everything I do, and having voice mail e-mails will contribute to this.
  2. I can easily pickup messages while traveling internationally, when my cell phone is normally off
  3. I can pickup messages when I may have internet access, but no cell signal or access - like in some rural areas or when my cell phone battery dies.

Boy am I glad I forgot to take back my cell phone, look at what I got to learn today.

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2 comments:

  1. Unknown12:00 PM

    Google Voice just started allowing you to use them as well. They also do transcriptions to your email, although they are a little flaky.

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  2. Ben Simon2:29 PM

    Khyle -

    That's good to know. I know that PhoneFusion will also do transcripts, though it's not free.

    PhoneFusion is going to have an uphill battle against google voice. One of the prime reasons I use PF instead of GV is that PF got me as a client first - but that's not going to keep me from switching ;-).

    Though, I like PF and sure hope they can survive the competition.

    -Ben

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