Aug 05 2008
Selling Geek podcast #9 - PhoneTag
I hate voice mail.
Oh, I remember back in the early 80’s when the software company I was working for first got an automated voice mail system, and we all thought it was cool. You can forward a phone message to group of people, all with a couple keystrokes? Cool. You can retrieve your phone messages anytime, from anywhere, whenever you want? Cool. No more mounds of little “when you were out” notes waiting on your desk when you got back from a trip? Cool.
Oh, yes, back in the 80’s, voice mail was great. We loved it.
But then, somewhere in the 90’s, something happened. Just about everyone started replacing their live operators and receptionists with automated systems, and suddenly, voice mail became voice mail hell. That’s when all of our calls to customers and prospects started to sound like this:
“Hello! Your call is very important to us. That’s why we’ve made it impossible to reach a live human being! Press 1 if you want to buy something, press 2 to leave a message for customer support. Press 3 if you find this mildly annoying. Press 4 if you think this is extremely irritating. Press 5 if you are starting to get angry and frustrated. Press 6 if you’d like to hear all these options over again. Or, just hang up and leave us alone. Have a great day!”
Also, by then, we were all carrying mobile phones, which was great – no more hunting for a pay phone anymore. But it also meant that we had multiple voice mailboxes to check – the mobile voice mail, office voice mail, and sometimes our home number voice mail.
It’s now 2008, and I must sadly confess that I am the proud possessor of no less than six voice mailboxes: my corporate office number, my home office number, my business mobile number, my personal mobile number, the Selling Geek US toll-free line, and our international SkypeIn number. Yep, that’s six numbers, all with their own voice mail system.
It takes me a long time to check six voice mailboxes. I have to dial each number, check status, listen to each message and then act on it. And, of course, all these voice mail systems don’t talk to each other. So if I get a message on my business mobile line, I can’t forward it to my office system, or vice versa. This means that I have to call my office line and leave another voice mail for my colleagues there – which takes even more time.
Like I said, I hate voice mail.
Enter: PhoneTag
So, when I first heard about PhoneTag, I was intrigued. Here’s a service that will pick up your unanswered calls, record messages, transcribes those recordings to text, and then forwards them to you as e-mail or text messages or both.
I was skeptical at first. Could PhoneTag transcribe messages accurately enough to be readable and useful? Would it be outrageously expensive? Would it work with all my different numbers and services? Could it really save me time?
I’ve been using PhoneTag for a few months now, and I’m delighted to report that it works superbly in every respect. If you are a sales professional, and you hate voice mail as much as me, do not delay – go, right now, and get PhoneTag. It is that good.
PhoneTag’s value and quality
Since adopting PhoneTag, I have saved between one and two working hours every week. I don’t have to dial in to six different voice mailboxes anymore – all the messages come to me. And it takes much, much less time to scan a text message than it does to listen to spoken voice. And because all my messages come to my Blackberry as email, I can forward them to anyone in seconds, or just highlight the phone number, and press one button to call the message sender back.
The call transcription quality is very good. It’s not perfect, by any means – sometimes PhoneTag transcribes proper nouns phonetically, and then indicates such with a “(?)” designation. But I’ve never had any trouble figuring out what PhoneTag is trying to tell me. I estimate that it gets about 98% of every message transcribed perfectly, and so far, it has correctly captured 100% of the all-important phone numbers left by my callers.
How does PhoneTag work?
PhoneTag is also easy to set up. I configure my phone services to “call forward / no answer” to a dedicated number that PhoneTag provided when I set up my account. This required some special combinations of phone keypad entries, which can vary according to your mobile service. PhoneTag sent me a detailed list of instructions when I registered, and all the required key sequences were included. With PhoneTag’s help, I set up forwarding from Verizon, Sprint, Skype, my toll-free number service, and my office system – each requiring only a few minutes.
When a caller dials one of my numbers, and if I don’t answer, they hear a typical “please leave a message” recording from me, but also a plea from PhoneTag that says, “Your message will be transcribed by PhoneTag.com – please speak clearly.” You can turn this feature off, but I’ve found it does help to prompt people to enunciate more carefully, and that means fewer transcription errors.
I then receive each message as an e-mail. You can also receive transcribed voice mail as text messages – but if it’s a long voice mail, it may be broken up into several text messages on your device. I’ve found that single e-mails sent to my Blackberry are much more convenient.
Recordings of messages, in WAV, MP3 or GSM format, are also appended to e-mails from PhoneTag, so you can hear the audio if you wish. I rarely need to do this unless I want to make sure I understand specific parts of a transcription.
PhoneTag also keeps copies of all your messages and recordings on their website, which you can access by logging in to your online account.
You can also upload your contacts to PhoneTag from Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail or any application from which you can generate a properly formatted comma-separated value file. PhoneTag will search for each caller’s number in your contact list, and if it finds the matching contact name and/or the company name, it will send you a notification message from that contact name, e-mail and number, instead of from a generic PhoneTag address. This makes it easier to reply to messages.
What does PhoneTag cost?
PhoneTag offers three levels of service: an unlimited number of messages for just under US$30 per month, or up to 40 messages for just under $10 per month (plus 35 cents per message received over the 40th every month), or a pure per-message charge of 35 cents per message.
(So, if you do the math, you should buy the per-message plan if you receive less than 28 messages a month. Buy the unlimited plan if you receive more than 98 messages per month. Otherwise, buy the 40 messages per month plan.)
There is also a variably priced Enterprise option for organizations that want a company-wide license.
Like mobile phone charges based on a designated number of minutes per month, PhoneTag can get a little pricey if you opt for one of the limited plans and go over those limits. Note that PhoneTag’s plans do not include any fees for data or text messaging that you may also incur from your wireless carrier, so you may want to change your mobile phone plan before investing in PhoneTag.
Other uses for PhoneTag
Besides saving time, I’ve found PhoneTag useful for all sorts of other reasons. For example:
- I can now access my most important messages first. PhoneTag brings “visual voicemail” capabilities to my Blackberry. Now, instead of having to listen to every message sequentially, I can jump immediately to the most critical messages from my customers and prospects.
- My voice mail is now searchable, copyable, pastable, printable and forwardable. Now I can use the Find command on my Blackberry or in Outlook to search my voice messages for specific phrases or keywords. I can also forward voice mails, from all of my voice mailboxes, to colleagues much easier in e-mail. And it’s a lot easier now to save phone numbers into my contact list.
- Ever try to listen to voice mail in a crowded airport or train station? And did you ever find yourself trying to memorize phone numbers left in voice mails because you couldn’t write it down at the moment? I no longer have these kinds of annoyances, thanks to PhoneTag.
- And the best thing of all: I am finally able to tactfully educate some of my co-workers about how to leave a proper voice mail message. Whenever anyone sends me a long, rambling, incoherent voice mail, I just forward the PhoneTag transcription to them in an email, and ask them to interpret the message for me. Nothing works better than seeing your unintelligible babblings in print to make you realize that you need to think first, then speak. It works.
Sales Pro Value Score
So, for liberating salespeople from the chains of voice mail, and for its easy set-up, usability, immediate productivity gains, moderate pricing, and value-added messaging and communication features, Selling Geek gives PhoneTag a Sales Pro Value Score of 4.5 out of a possible 5.
UPDATE: PhoneTag has generously provided a free 30-day trial for Selling Geek blog readers and podcast listeners! Click this link for your free trial: https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/sellinggeek
Dave here with PhoneTag, glad to hear our voicemail-to-text product is saving you 1-2 hours a week. Here’s a 30 day free trial for your readers - https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/sellinggeek
Many thanks, Dave, to you and PhoneTag for providing this free trial to Selling Geek blog readers and podcast listeners! I’m certain that sales pros will benefit from your great service.