Google Voice is a free IP telephony service that provides users with one phone number that can be forwarded to multiple phones or devices. It includes features such as call forwarding, voicemail translation, text messaging, and voice calls. Fees may apply for international calling.
$10
per month
Lifesize CxEngage
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
CxEngage is a cloud contact center solution designed to meet users' needs and
work in their environment. Unlike monolithic architectures and on-premises
solutions, CxEngage is a ‘born-in-the-cloud’ platform to deliver unified visibility
across voice, video, and digital channels. CxEngage is designed to just work
anywhere, and to be implemented in a few days or weeks.
In the past, I would have happily recommended this for small business use cases. Due to its affordability, versatility, and low barrier to entry as well as its simplicity to use. Google Voice was integrated into the Chrome Browser, it was easily accessed from Gmail, and integrated into Gmail and could even be leveraged in such a way to when phone numbers were clicked on, Google Voice was the tool used. However over the past few years and more, in the past couple of years from 2021 to current, this tool seems to have lost favor with the Alphabet suite of tools. With the lack of integrations, it's becoming less stable, and people are just opting more for Google Meet Voice. The biggest area where this is less appropriate and where opportunity has opened for others is its lack of features, like virtual attendants, call recording, call transcription, SMS, MMS, CRM integration, and other key features even 1 or 2 person business really needs in this day and age
CxEngage can handle some more complex flow options that other vendors don't seem to be able to do. The integration for voice calls with Salesforce is a huge plus. The integration of email support with Salesforce is a BIG miss. After fighting with it for a year, we finally just turned it off and use Salesforce Omnichannel for email support. Chat using Salesforce Live Agent worked fine enough.
Stronger support and more reliable system for users not on a commercial network
Consumer friendly and intuitive reporting and dashboard tools. build canned reports
Reporting: Ability to get a combined SVL for all queues included on a report (now we manually calculate after exporting the report into excel). Same for all major data points (ASA, AHT, etc.)
Ability to include abandoned calls and an abandonment percentage which excludes short abandons on the Queue summary report. Now the report just shows total abandons and abandonment percentage so if we want to exclude short abandons we have to pull a separate report to find out how many calls abandoned in less than 10 seconds then calculate the "true abandoned number" (calls abandoned minus short abandons)
Ability to change what is considered a "short abandon" and then report on it. Right now the only option is the built in tracking of calls that abandoned in equal to or less than 10 seconds.
Ability to "save" an agents "default" skill profile so that any changes we make can be returned to "BAU" with a click of a button
quicker data/historical report retrieval
way to separate what we have listed as a queue name for reporting vs. what is used for the queue name in the "whisper" (the issue we had with WT queue naming conventions because we had to have the whisper be super precise)
It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice
I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.
They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.
It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype
We implemented in 2018 and were only given 8 weeks to do it...as per the direction of our parent company at the time. Serenova at the time responded well and we were able to go Live within 8-weeks...albeit the product overall was a big change and had gaps in features over our previous contact management solution.
The integrations of Google Voice with all our devices are flawless, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac. Also, the call performance is far superior on wifi as well as on mobile data. With Skype, we had several problems with personal accounts, performance issues, and in general, it felt awkward to use it.
It's been too many years...I don't remember. Except in 2021 we looked briefly at Amazon and Salesforce call center offerings. Both were too basic at the time that even if we got a great deal on licensing (we are a Salesforce house for other things), we couldn't easily (or at all) do things like Callbacks and some of the more robust flow buildouts that we have in place today with Lifesize.
Google Voice should be also be use to those who have difficulty in speaking English. So the contract term will need to be a little strict as Google Voice is used in navigations as the part of GPRS navigation is personal. The private data need to be in control much more securely and safely.
It help to connect with the products that we use as a part. We need to get in touch with our professional world. It is like a tool that helps us to get in touch with everything from A to Z in our professional careers. So we need to be in touch with everything as linearly as the jpb can be done.
Cost for Google Voice is stellar, starting at $10/mo per user.
While it doesn't offer a new Audio/Video conferencing solution it does integrate with GSuite so it makes use of Google Calendar and Hangouts/ Google Meet.
Gets the employee's to use their company phone numbers more as texting is easy and deployment is simple.
The cell phone app is reliable and easy to deploy.
