The findings lead to the notion that American workers are focused on getting more done in 2011. With an estimated 247 billion emails sent daily (according to Pingdom), Americans are focused on how to become more productive in our post-recession economy and how to get more out of their business communications.

This survey was conducted online in December, 2010 by Harris Interactive on behalf of Intermedia. Respondents were employed US adults who have a New Year’s business communications resolution.

The survey also found that workers resolve to get organized, and respond more quickly to business communications. We’ll talk about these tomorrow and Thursday.

What are your New Year’s resolutions? How connected do you want to be while away from work in 2011?

Image by sxc.hu user ba1969

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• Forward cell or landline numbers to Google Voice. It’s not yet possible to port existing numbers to Google Voice, but forwarding allows you to take advantage of its automated message transcription service and some of its other features. Not surprisingly, the quality of the transcriptions varies, but they’re generally good enough to save the hassle of calling your voicemail to listen to messages.
• Create a “voicemail-only” Google Voice number to use when you don’t want to give out your real phone number. When setting up such an account, you’ll need to forward it to an existing number in order to verify it, but you can then set the number to “Do Not Disturb, ” or delete the forwarding number entirely in the Google Voice web interface.
• Create numbers in area codes other than your own. The phone company used to charge huge fees for “foreign exchange” numbers; now, you can create a Google Voice number in any U.S. area code where numbers are available (and there are lots to choose from, except in Alaska and Hawaii).
• Create numbers that spell something memorable or fun. When searching for a new number, you can type in a word, and Google Voice will find numbers that spell what you’re looking for, or you can use a site like PhoneSpell.
• Set up Google Voice numbers to track marketing campaigns. Using multiple numbers is an easy and free way to find out how effective a particular advertising medium is.

Note that Google Voice only allows you to sign up for one number per email address. But email addresses don’t have to be Gmail accounts; any valid email address will do. Also, you can only forward one Google Voice number to a specific phone number, and you can’t forward one Google Voice number to another Google Voice number.

What creative ways have you found for using Google Voice?

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This time, let’s look at a business phone system that provides both incoming and outgoing service, plus actual phones. The folks at RingCentral have kindly set me up with one of their packages, the RingCentral Office. They also offer RingCentral Online, an inbound service similar to those listed above, but we’ll focus on the Office package for simplicity.

Options

RingCentral Office has three pricing levels, ranging from a one-line, 10-extension plan for $49.99 per month to an 8-line, unlimited extension plan for $179.99 per month. Each plan comes with various combinations of toll-free and local numbers, as well as toll-free or local dedicated fax numbers. You can also port your existing local or toll-free numbers to RingCentral.

All plans are advertised as having “unlimited minutes,” but (as is apparently the norm among VoIP providers) “unlimited” actually means 5,000 minutes per month; if you go over that, you’ll be charged 3.9 cents/minute. That works out to roughly 2.5 hours of talking per day. Are you and your colleagues on the phone that much? At my company, we aren’t, but some folks might need to be aware of this limit.

What You Get

RingCentral Office includes all of the features that have become standard for Internet phone services. They offer numbers in the U.S., Canada and the UK.

RingCentral offers two types of phones. The phone RingCentral provided to me is a Linksys (now owned by Cisco) SPA942. At first glance, it looks much like a modern business phone. But instead of plugging it into a phone jack, one connects it to the Internet using a standard RJ-45 network cable. If you only have one Internet connection, you can plug the phone into your internet connection, and then plug other devices into the phone. I was pleased with the phone. It’s relatively easy to operate, but strangely, it doesn’t support a headset, something I’ve gotten quite used to.

If you would prefer to use your existing phone equipment, RingCentral also offers an ATA adapter which connects the Internet to regular phones. Since most people aren’t technically-minded enough to want to fiddle with ATAs or configuration of phones, RingCentral ships their equipment pre-configured. All I had to do was plug in the power and the ethernet cable, and the phone was online and ready to use. RingCentral tells me that they provide their phones at or below wholesale cost; a little research confirmed that their equipment prices are quite low.

When you or your colleagues are out of the office, you can use the web site and Windows- or Mac-based softphone application to send, receive and manage calls and messages. One of the unusual features of the softphone app is the ability to view incoming calls and reply with a short message like “I’ll call you back in 10 minutes” without actually answering the phone call. There’s also integration with Outlook’s contact list.

For iPhone users, there’s a native application that provides easy access to voicemail (separate from the iPhone’s built-in voicemail) and faxes. You can also use the iPhone app to make calls showing the Caller ID from your business line — without displaying your iPhone’s telephone number. Similar native applications are being developed for other platforms; I gather that the BlackBerry is next on RingCentral’s list. I didn’t test RingCentral’s software, but I’ve gotten positive feedback from others who’ve used it.

Ordering

When ordering, you’ll be asked to specify the plan you want, the number of lines needed, as well as the number of local and toll-free numbers. You can create a plan that meets your specific needs, and you can change plans at will, since you don’t need to sign a contract. If you return the phones, the return will be subject to a restocking fee.

RingCentral boasts that its services can be priced and purchased directly from its web site without needing to call (although it does offer ordering by phone). While web ordering is certainly possible, I found the website to be less than clear in explaining the differences between the various plans and options. RingCentral tells me that a redesigned site is on the way.

Quality

Of course, in a business environment, call quality is key. In my tests, I (and the people I talked to) agreed that our conversations were clear, loud, and with none of the delay that sometimes plagues services like Google Voice. RingCentral tells me that the service is SIP-based, but that they’ve done significant signal processing so that anyone with a DSL, cable or faster Internet connection should hear excellent sound quality. Dialup connections aren’t recommended, for obvious reasons.

Reliability

RingCentral has been around for several years, but only started offering the Office product in early 2009. According to the company, it is now providing its Office service to over 3,000 organizations of various sizes, including some of over 50 users, with the four-line option is the most popular. They have multiple levels of redundancy and backups, but of course, if your local Internet connection or power goes out, you’ll be unable to use RingCentral, or any other Internet-based phone system.

If you are in the market for a virtual PBX system that provides phone hardware with incoming and outgoing service, you’ll want to look at a number of options, including Accessline Digital Business Phone System, FreedomIQ Hosted PBX, and Phone.com Business Phone, Whatever you choose, RingCentral Office is certainly a strong competitor.

Do you use RingCentral?

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Many web workers are looking at services like Google Voice and 3jam, which allow you to have one business phone number that can be configured to forward to cell phones, to voice mail, or to colleagues if you’re out of the office. Google Voice, however, isn’t really designed for business use, and 3jam has only limited business-oriented features.

If you need more robust features, there are many business-oriented “virtual phone systems.” I’ve recently taken one such product, Grasshopper (formerly GotVMail), for a spin, and was impressed by it. But its cost is higher than Google Voice and 3jam, so you’ll need to see if the feature set is worth it for you.

Grasshopper has quite an extensive feature set; more than I can list here. But some of the most useful are:

• A very slick web interface. Since the system has so many features, it takes a while to find everything, but it’s pretty self-explanatory, and Grasshopper makes good use of tooltips and contextual help to point out and explain features. I found the interface to be a bit slow on occasion, but it’s generally pretty responsive.
• The ability for each company member to have their own extension, with individual greetings, voicemail, web access and notifications by email or text messaging.
• The ability to create “department” extensions that can be forwarded to one or more members of that department. Alternatively, one can create a “call-routing” extension that distributes calls equally across multiple extensions (useful for multi-person sales or support teams).
• The ability to purchase local numbers or toll-free numbers (including “vanity” numbers), as well as to transfer in existing numbers, with minimal setup fees.
• The ability to accept faxes, which can be sent to individual extensions, or to a dedicated fax extension. Faxes can be viewed online, or emailed to you as PDFs.
• The ability to specify your regular business hours, and to route incoming calls differently depending on time of day.
• Control over on-hold music. Grasshopper offers several different types, or you can upload your own (which might include messages as well as music). The default selections aren’t too bad, as hold music goes. You can use different music for each extension, if desired. There doesn’t seem to be a way to turn off hold music entirely, although I imagine that you could upload a blank MP3 file and select that.
• The ability to record your own messages by phone, or to upload MP3 files. Grasshopper will write and record messages for you for $75-$175.

Given Grasshopper’s extensive features, I was surprised that there doesn’t seem to be a way to import contacts into the address book. And it doesn’t have voicemail transcription, like Google Voice and SpinVox do.

I suspect that most web workers will want to look at Grasshopper’s plans and pricing closely. As with most cellphone plans, Grasshopper charges you for incoming minutes. So the $9.95/month “Start” plan, which bundles only 100 minutes per month (with each additional minute billed at 6 cents), will probably not be suitable for most web workers. The “Grow” plan, priced at $49/month, and which is bundled with 2,000 minutes, is probably the minimum that will be useful in a business environment; Grasshopper also offers a more comprehensive plan for $199 a month.

You’ll want to compare Grasshopper with similar services such as Accessline, Virtual PBX, Onebox, RingCentral and others. Plan prices and features vary widely, so you’ll probably be able to find a service that fits your needs and budget. For instance, Accessline (which I’ve used for several years) has a similar service priced at $59.95 per month, but Costco members can get it for $29.95-$34.95. Accessline don’t have all the features that Grasshopper does, and its web interface is pretty clunky by today’s standards. But it has worked well for my company’s needs.

Grasshopper is certainly worth checking out. Its feature set makes it a worthy competitor in a field with many good products.

Have you used Grasshopper? What other virtual phone systems have you used?

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3jam is billing itself as an alternative to Google Voice, and it’s available today, so I’ve given it a quick spin. This is not a complete review, as there are some of 3jam’s features that I haven’t tried, such as SMS messaging, forwarding to Skype, an API that lets you write your own applications to interact with their service, and “group” numbers that allow multiple users to share voice mail and messaging.

Signing Up and Getting a Number

Signing up for the service is easy. Just select an area code where you want a number and 3jam will display a series of available numbers from which you can pick. You can also enter words to see if you can get a “vanity number” that spells something. You can also port an existing number to the 3jam service for a onetime fee of $25, something that Google Voice doesn’t yet offer. Right now, 3jam is only offering incoming numbers in the continental U.S. If you want an incoming number in another country, you’ll need SkypeIn or another VoIP service.

Pricing

In my opinion, a major weakness of 3jam’s service is its complex pricing structure. For those of us who are used to the clearly-defined packages offered by most cell phone and VoIP providers, it’s bewildering to be confronted with a choice of monthly fees and SMS packages, and to realize that the monthly fees include only a ridiculously small number of incoming minutes (just 30!) and no outgoing minutes at all.

3jam charges a monthly fee ranging from $4.99 per month for a 12-month contract, to $8.99 per month on a monthly basis. Additional minutes, SMS and even transcriptions of voice mails (over the first 30) cost extra. Additional minute rates for calls (apparently both incoming and outgoing) are competitive. The SMS prices are puzzling, though: 5 cents per message to the U.S., but only 4 cents to Uganda or Uzbekistan?

Annoyingly, information about pricing is very difficult to find on 3jam’s web site. The monthly fees are displayed during the sign-up process, but only after you’ve already selected a phone number. A more comprehensive list of pricing seems to be available only in the help section, which I found by doing a search.

By comparison, the Google Voice service does not currently charge a monthly fee, or fees for calls and SMS messages in the U.S. Google Voice charges for international calls at rates that are competitive with other VoIP services. It’s rumored that Google could make the service advertising-supported at some point.

While some people may find 3jam’s à la carte approach to pricing advantageous, I think that businesses will need to know what they can expect to pay; 3jam makes that difficult. The 3jam control panel does offer a running total of calls made and the costs incurred, so users can at least keep track of what they’ve spent.

Setup

Setting up the service is straightforward. You can set incoming calls to the 3jam number to ring on as many as six different phones, not only in the U.S., but in many other locations throughout the world. You can also forward incoming calls to Skype, something that Google Voice doesn’t offer. And you can forward incoming SMS messages to IM services like Google Talk and AIM, which is a nice touch.

3jam offers the ability to import your contacts to its address book from external email accounts like Gmail, and from Outlook, Thunderbird Entourage and .csv files. I was unable to get either Gmail or a .csv import to work, however, and didn’t try the other options.

Quality

Like many VoIP services, sound quality varies from call to call. I had several friends place test calls to me, and we heard occasional echoes, delays and crackles. But generally, call clarity was good — as good as Google Voice, if not better. The transcriptions of voice mails seem to be on a par with Google Voice as well, which is to say, good enough to get the gist of the message, even when some words are missing or incorrect.

Applications

3jam offers three applications that I didn’t try because I’m on a Mac. The first is a Windows-only desktop application for SMS messaging. (The site mentions a web version, but the link to it doesn’t seem to be working.) There is also a BlackBerry app, and a way of having 3jam send messages to you via Twitter.

For people who need maximum flexibility in routing calls and SMS messages, especially internationally, 3jam is likely to be an excellent choice. For those who need to forecast their communication costs, and those who don’t need the international forwarding options, Google Voice is probably a better choice, once it becomes more widely available.

Have you tried 3jam? How does it compare to Google Voice?

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Google Voice

Google Voice germinated after Google acquired GrandCentral almost two years ago. The service was relaunched earlier this year as a private beta for GrandCentral users. I’ve been using it for a while, and am generally impressed. Google Voice offers a number of features that should make it popular with web workers.

Incoming Calls and SMS

• You are given one phone number that can be configured to ring multiple places — office, home, cell phone or even an account on the VoIP service Gizmo5. (In the past, users were assigned a new telephone number. Apparently, it will soon be possible to port existing numbers to Google Voice.) Sound quality is quite good, although there can be a delay in transmission, which causes awkward pauses. It’s rather like a better version of talking via satellite.
• If you are not available, voicemails are recorded. They can be transcribed and sent to you by email or SMS. The accuracy of the transcriptions varies, but ranges from fair to excellent.

• You can choose to screen some or all callers, and have them speak their name before the call is forwarded to you. You can set up groups, and allow some callers to bypass screening.
• You can “listen in” on callers as they leave messages, or record calls.
• You can import your contacts through CSV files.

Outgoing Calls and SMS

• You can make outgoing calls through the Google Voice web site. Outgoing calls are free in the continental U.S. International calling rates are quite reasonable, and are competitive with many VoIP services.
• With the Google Voice Add-on for Firefox, you don’t even need to go to the Google Voice web site to make calls. You can just click the add-on and enter a number. And the add-on recognizes phone numbers on web pages and makes them clickable links, too.
• You can also send SMS messages through the Google Voice web site and the Firefox add-on. When you do so, you are assigned a number in area code 406 that allows recipients to reply.

There are a number of other useful features, including conference calling. The complete list is at Google Voice help.

Are you already using Google Voice? Will you sign up once it becomes available?

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Signing up with the service is a breeze. Just enter your cell phone number into the YouMail web site to receive an activation code sent to your phone. Copy the code into the web app, and you’re in. YouMail provides excellent setup instructions specific to your phone (complete with screenshots for my BlackBerry Curve). After setup, YouMail lets you select how you want to receive alerts.

YouMail sends a voicemail alert by email

The service has three options for checking voicemail. You can program the “1″ key on your cell phone, dial the YouMail phone number that appears in all new voicemail alerts, or use visual voicemail by going to http://m.youmail.com from a web-capable cell phone. Using visual voicemail, you can view the caller’s info including location, audio file, transcribed message and photo, if available.

Checking voicemail at m.youmail.com on a BlackBerry

One of YouMail’s unique features is the ability to record custom greetings for individuals as well as groups. This feature is great for folks like me who work with a diversity of clients and teams. Rather than emailing and calling everyone on one of my teams to report that I’m out for two hours, I can customize a greeting for that specific group. You can use one of many free prerecorded messages from the service or record your own through your computer or cell phone.

The clean and user-friendly web interface makes it easy to import and manage contacts. Select a contact to choose a greeting, record a new one, or “ditch” (effectively block the caller — YouMail hangs up on them as soon as the greeting finishes playing). You can also email and text your contacts within the web interface.

YouMail's web interface

Everything is free except for the voice transcription service, which varies in price, depending on how many many messages you will have transcribed per month. Paying users can receive voicemail transcribed into text messages, emails or both, along with an MP3 file of the original audio. You can try out the voice-to-text service before investing into a premium plan with Read-It Free Favorite, which allows you to receive transcribed voicemails as text messages from one contact.

The voice-to-text messaging service isn’t perfect. This was demonstrated when I left the following voicemail: “Hi, Meryl. This is Kay calling to see if you got my email. Let me know if you have any questions about the report. Thank you.” I took care to speak slowly and clearly, but the transcribed version came out as: “Hi meryl all does is kate calling Tuesday if you’ve got my email, let me know if u have in in question about.” You can help improve its accuracy of your voice by rating transcripts and sending corrections to the service.

YouMail stands out from similar services with its per-contact and per-group greeting customization and friendly interface, and the transcription service is useful, even if it’s not particularly accurate.

Do you use visual voicemail or any other useful mobile phone applications?

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However, if you’ve ever thought it would be nice to read your voicemails either in as a text message or email, PhoneTag has a service in mind for you.  With this add-on PhoneTag service, you can have all your phones ring at the same time, and if you call goes to voicemail – ready your voicemail through PhoneTag.

These voicemail to text services have been around for quite some time, but before this integration between PhoneTag and GrandCentral, you had to choose between the two services. No more.

PhoneTag, formerly known as SimulScribe, was among the first to offer voice-to-text transcription.  PhoneTag also gives you a wav audio version of the email, along with your text summary of the message.  The company is well established and is compatible with many mobile carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Alltel and more.

After 10 voicemail tests, the PhoneTag service works very well.  All messages were transcribed with 98% accuracy.  If PhoneTag can’t decipher a word spoken to it, it puts a question mark at the end of the word to alert you.

The service is useful, but voice-to-text services as a whole are not without their flaws.  Voice recognition is still more of an art than a science, and errors can occur when a computer tries to interpret voicemails and relay them into text.

I have used a similar service from CallWave, with unfavorable results.  Voicemails were interpreted incorrectly and if you simply relied upon the text summary of the voicemail, you’d receive the wrong message.  For example, a person left me a message that actually said, “Hi Jason, this is Josh, please call me”.  The text transcription literally read, “Hi Jason, this is Josh, don’t call me”.  Luckily I had the raw voicemail to listen to and didn’t think my co-worker didn’t wish to hear from me.

PhoneTag service starts at $10/month for 40 messages or $30 for unlimited messages.

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