VoxOx Can Help Screen and Manage Your Calls, Including Those From Pesky Sales Reps

In sales, the person keeping you (the salesperson) from the decision maker is often known as “the gatekeeper.” More often than not it’s a secretary or executive assistant.

I don’t have a secretary, but I do have VoxOx, and it works great in screening annoying calls from vendors and other folks.

One of VoxOx’s world-beating capabilities is a free personal assistant, which answers, screens and manages your calls better than any service on the market. It’s been compared favorably to Google Voice. I won’t go into all the specifics of the personal assistant, as I’ve written about it many times before. But as I’ve been getting more calls from vendors (salespeople), the service has become even more useful.

Case in point: the other day I received a call from a webcasting vendor I wasn’t particularly eager to talk with. Here’s a breakdown of how the VoxOx Personal Assistant helped me manage the call to a favorable outcome. It’s useful in seeing exactly how the service works.

• When the vendor called my free VoxOx number, my personal assistant, customized with a female voice, picked up the call and politely asked who’s calling. The vendor gave her name and company – let’s call her Alice from ABC Webcasting.

• My personal assistant then called me and told me Alice was on the line. She then gave me several options, including picking up the call or sending Alice to voicemail. There is another option called Eavesdrop, which enables me to listen in on a caller’s voicemail and then pick up the call right out of voicemail. So that’s what I did.

• I had no intention really of talking with Alice, but after listening to her live message for several seconds, I decided I actually did want to talk with her. So I hit *1 and picked up the call in mid-message.

I’m glad I did because Alice and I had a good conversation. But I wasn’t done using my personal assistant yet. With some noisy colleagues in the background, I hit *2 during our call, and conveniently transferred the call from my office phone to my cell phone so I could walk outside. My personal assistant stayed on the call and I could have used her for a number of other functions.

So there you have it, the play-by-play of how I managed a single call using the VoxOx Personal Assistant. Our web page has a full instruction guide.

Do you have cool experience you want to share with the personal assistant, or VoxOx in general? Leave a comment below and you could win free calling minutes.

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

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What Do Users Think? UserVoice helps us see what features users want to see most.

It’s a web-based crowd-sourcing application called UserVoice, which enables users such as yourself to provide product feature suggestions, bug reports and other important feedback on our beta service. What sets this tool apart is the ability to vote on each product suggestion, whether your own or someone else’s. This allows you — and us — to see the “wisdom of the crowds,” i.e., what does the majority want to see added to VoxOx, what bugs are hot right now and need to be fixed? You’ll be able to see this the moment you visit the site. For example, right now you’ll see that using VoxOx with SIP devices is number one on the the list, with a total of 167 votes. This means essentially that many people would like to be able to incorporate VoxOx with a SIP-compatible handset at home (SIP stands for Session Initiated Protocol, but I won’t bore you with the details). Second on the list is folks who would like to see a Linux version of VoxOx.

Each person on UserVoice gets 10 votes — so use them wisely. You can get more by changing your vote, or getting credited when something is completed.

Another great thing about the service is that it allows you to see the status of each product suggestion or bug report. For example, you can see that the Linux project has already been started (sorry, can’t give you a completion date here), while the PayPal suggestion down below is being “planned,” i.e. on the roadmap.

Before you leave a comment or product suggestion, however, be sure to do a quick search in the search box at the top. This will allow you to see if anyone has already submitted that suggestion.

Finally, one last tip — be sure to log in to UserVoice using your VoxOx username and password. That way, when the status changes on something you’ve voted upon — for example a suggestion is now live — you’ll get an email notification right away.

So give us your wisdom — try out the new service today. In the future, you can access the feedback portal by clicking on the support link in the upper-right hand corner of the VoxOx web site (accessible from any page). From there, click on “suggestions” or “report bug” in the left-hand column. We value your feedback as we refine and enhance our beta service!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

After diving into the service pretty extensively over the past few weeks, I wanted to present my list of the top five ways the VoxOx PA can help you be more productive in your business and personal life.

1. Screen Your Calls — One of the best things about the PA is having someone answer and screen your calls — not unlike a real secretary. When someone calls my VoxOx number, my personal assistant will answer the call and politely ask the person to identify themselves. She (yes, she is a she, although you can choose a male personal assistant) will then let me know who is calling. I can then either answer the call or send it to voicemail (I can also listen in on the voicemail and pick it up, but I’ll save that for another post). Not only does this make me feel important (!), it forces people with blocked numbers to identify themselves. Knowing who is calling each time makes me more productive. Really cool.
2. Faxing — I admit I don’t send a lot of faxes, but when that occasion occurs — usually some sort of document signing — I sure don’t feel like paying companies like eFax $17 a month for an account, and then 10 cents per page (for outbound). Through the VoxOx Personal Assistant, all inbound faxes are free and all outbound faxes correspond with regular VoxOx calling rates (about a penny a minute in the US). This aspect of the PA can save you a lot of money each month.
3. Outbound Conference Calling — It’s cool that you can use the personal assistant to make outbound conference calls from your softphone (on your desktop), but the new version of the VoxOx PA enables you to do so remotely from your cell phone. When you are on a mobile call and want to bridge other people in, just hit *3 to access your personal assistant. Enter in up to 20 numbers and the PA will call everyone, and then bridge them into the call. So no matter where you are, you can have an on-the-fly conference call. That’s productivity — at extremely low rates. Click here to access a user guide for the PA.
4. Changing Your Find Me Settings Remotely — Say what? This doesn’t sound very exciting. Oh, but it is. One of the features the VoxOx PA offers is the ability to “find you” wherever you are. That means calling you sequentially on your mobile, your office, your home phone or any other number you program in (she will also ring all your phone simultaneously). But what happens when you are traveling overseas and don’t have access to a computer? No problem, just call into your personal assistant and add the number of your pre-paid SIM card or mobile phone to your Find Me list and you are good to go. People calling you won’t necessarily know you are overseas, and you don’t have to worry about giving them a new temporary number.
5. Call Recording — Using your personal assistant, you can easily record a conversation. For example, let’s say you are talking to a customer or a friend about something important. You just hit *1 to start recording a call. The PA will let you know that call recording has begun, but the caller on the other end will have no idea (so it’s up to you to tell them if so inclined). Hit *1 to stop the recording and a sound file of the conversation will automatically be sent to your email address. Depending on the conversation, this can be hugely productive and alleviate the need for taking notes.

There you have it — five ways the VoxOx Personal Assistant can make you more productive. I’d love to hear what you think are the best or most productive PA features.

Until next time!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

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A small contingent from VoxOx attended the four-day event in Las Vegas last week, meeting with press, analysts and other parties to show off the second version of our VoxOx Personal Assistant, a productivity tool that helps you better manage your voice communications. Think Google Voice, but richer and more robust. The enhanced version adds remote access functionality, which is key because it takes VoxOx off the desktop and allows you to access your personal assistant from any mobile phone (read the release).

The show was big success. And now that we’ve recovered (on sleep at least; my wallet is still way too light after hitting the craps tables), I wanted to share some of our experiences, including select press coverage and random photos I took with my iPhone.

Select coverage:

• CNET: “CES: New VoxOx Features Help Even Old Cell Phones”
• PCMag: “VoxOx Universal Communicator Adds Personal Assistant”
• eWeek: “VoxOx Sprinkles Remote Access into Google Voice, Ribbit Rival”
• LA Times: “CES: Here’s What Wasn’t on the Show Floor”
• Enterprise VoIP Planet: “VoxOx Upgrade Brings Enhanced Remote Functionality”

Select photos of the show:

Arriving at CES: Outside one of the smaller entrances at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Is This a Rave, or a Trade Show? In front of the Intel booth.

Got to See it to Believe it. CTO Kevin Hertz gives a press briefing.

Flying Thing You Control With Your iPhone: The epitome of gadget at CES, this expensive toy packed crowds all day long at CESc

Massaged to Sleep? I tried to get into one of these bad boys, but the line was too long.

Alright, there you have it. Our week at CES. If you haven’t already, be sure to download the latest version of VoxOx.

‘Til next time!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

Guess who else will be there? The VoxOx team. That’s right, a small contingent of us will be at the mega-event, showing off an important new VoxOx capability that enables consumers to better manage their communications. We’ll be making an announcement tomorrow morning. Sorry, I can’t say anything more until then, but stay tuned to this blog and also follow our updates on Twitter (@voxox).

See you on the craps tables!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

LinkedIn Launched its New LinkedIn Platform Today

LinkedIn made an important and long-awaited move today when it announced the launch of its LinkedIn Platform and access to its LinkedIn APIs.

The platform will enable developers to easily create web applications and tools that leverage LinkedIn’s unique community of more than 50 million business professionals. Such platforms were key in the evolving success of Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

For VoxOx, this means we can soon integrate LinkedIn into our core social networking capabilities. If you didn’t know, VoxOx enables consumes to unify all of their communication channels – voice, video, text, chat, email, fax, etc. — into a single interface. As part of this, we empower users to update all of their social networks with the single click of a mouse.

As of now, we provide access to the most popular networks — Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. We also provide additional instant messaging integration with AOL, Jabber, GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo, Skype and more (a third leg of the stool involves Internet-based voice calling capabilities more feature-rich than Skype and Google Voice combined).

For many, LinkedIn is among the “big three” of social networks behind Facebook and Twitter. Adding the ability to update all of your networks, including LinkedIn (or just LinkedIn itself) while communicating from a single interface –VoxOx – is a powerful feature we look forward to delivering in the next several months.

Only through this type of integration can we hope to solve our communications overload and keep up with what some have termed the ‘status-phere,’ i.e. the constant and never-ending updates of our social profiles.

We’ve already scoped out our plans for integrating LinkedIn. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on our status.

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

Thank you!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

I heard a great catch phrase at the recent Blog World & New Media Exp in Las Vegas: “status-phere.”

Put forth by PR and social media strategist/author Brian Solis (@briansolis) during one of the keynote panels, it instantly struck a chord.

Status-phere. To me, it’s defines the work aspect of social media.

To engage, contribute, share and generally participate within social media and social networking, you must typically update some type of status, whether it’s up to 140 characters on Twitter (and on LinkedIn for that matter), or a general status update on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, MSN or the myriad of other networks out there.

So how to contend with the all-consuming “status-phere”? How to participate effectively in social media and its many benefits without making it a part- or full-time job (not to mention putting up with a confusing array of browser windows and desktop clients)?

One way is to focus on the specific networks you find valuable. Another is to leverage an increasing number of tools that can help manage the task. These include services that can help manage multiple accounts on the same network (usually Twitter), and those that aggregate and help simplify updates to multiple networks.

Here’s a short list below. We’d love to hear your recommendations:

HootSuite's Tabbed Layou

• HootSuite – This web-based application is an extremely handy tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts. We use it at TelCentris to manage our consumer (VoxOx) and business-to-business accounts, easily toggling back and forth between our different profiles. It allows you to schedule Tweets to any of your accounts, as well as create shortened, trackable URLs.

• Ping.fm - I missed this one initially, but Ping.fm is one of the more comprehensive tools for integrating and aggregating your social networking clients, everything from Twitter to Bebo to Delicious. A recent test to update Facebook and LinkedIn simultaneously went swimmingly. Ping.fm also purports to handle instant messaging and SMS as well. One thing I like is the ability to search and post song links.

• Trillian Astra – Known more for its ability to chat across multiple IM (instant messaging) networks at the same time, Trillian, which has been around since 2001, also has added functionality to update your Facebook, Twitter and Skype accounts. Although available for the iPhone, Trillian fans are still waiting for a Mac version.

• TweetDeck – TweetDeck continues to add new functionality to help you integrate your social networks. TweetDeck was one of the first to add Facebook functionality. They recently added MySpace. If you like managing your social networks in a power dashboard format, TweetDeck is good option.

• TweetMiner – Like HootSuite, TweetMiner enables you to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single interface. I like TweetMiner mostly because of its simplified interface, and the way it allows you to search and post interesting news articles to your followers. You can manage up to five accounts, or upgrade to get increased functionality.

VoxOx Enables Users to Update Social/IM Networks

• VoxOx – You’re probably not surprised to find VoxOx on this list. Still in beta, VoxOx provides powerful functionality to update multiple social networks from one interface. They include Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, as well as MSN and Yahoo (both of which are turning their email portals into quasi-social networks). Like Trillian, VoxOx also enables you to update all major IM networks. It also goes one (or two) steps further by providing free Internet calling and better-than-Google Voice-type features. All from a single, unified interface.

‘Status-phere’ got you bogged down? Try these tools to help you ease your communication overload.

Do you have other tools to recommend? We’d love to hear them.

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we wanted to raise a virtual glass of champagne, or sparkling cider if you prefer, in your honor and personally thank all of our beta users for their support and participation over the last 365 days. We certainly have come a long way!

To give you an idea of our evolution, I wanted to show you a screenshot of what VoxOx looked like upon launch, and what it looks like now (well, I guess you already know that).

One year ago …

The VoxOx User Interface Upon Launch

… and today.

The VoxOx UI Today

In addition to the obvious difference in color, VoxOx has been bolstered with an array of new features and functionality that — taken as a whole — you can’t find anywhere else in the industry. No other service unifies eight major communication channels — from voice to social networking — into a single interface.

You can check out many of our bigger milestones — the launch of VoxOx 2, winning a Stevie’s Award for best new product, our new unlimited monthly calling plans — by visiting our press room. For more granular details, please visit our change log.

Also, if you haven’t taken our user survey, please do! We would love to know what you think of our beta service and how we can improve it even further. With your help, our second birthday will be even better than the first.

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox