When you hear the word “voicemail,” if you’re like me, you thought of basically a clunky automated system that’s basically a computerized answering machine. I guess those original paradigms tend to stick with us. But today’s enhanced voicemail service definitely isn’t your father’s voicemail.

The Enhanced Voicemail Services of today aren’t just for answering the phone when you’re not there any more either. Voicemail services today can be the heart of your business, insuring that every customer is handled professionally and reaches the right person. It can free you from your desk and make your whole business work together more smoothly.

The right service can definitely make a difference in your business

I can tell you from my own personal experience, adding an enhanced voicemail service helped my business grow from a one man operation to a virtual office with several people, able to work together very efficiently, from anywhere, all without the typical overhead and hassles of an office. It also gave me much more control and flexibility which has really been invaluable to me personally. That control allows us to distribute calls better so I can focus more on what I call the “money calls” while allowing the other people who work with me to handle more of the regular calls and free up some of my time too.

Toll free voicemail can be critical to your business. That is why it’s so important to get the right service and why a problem with your voicemail service can be totally paralyzing. It also doesn’t help that all of voicemail services use different terms and don’t lend themselves to easy comparison. Even a mediocre service can be made to look good if you compare just their best points to their competitor’s worst. So don’t judge a voicemail service based on their website or take advice from someone who’s trying to sell you something. Even if they look unbiased or like they’ve made a fair comparison, do NOT believe a website if you don’t know who wrote it and why. There are several fake comparison sites that are really just trying to sell you something.

We help you get the right number and the right service

It’s also important that you get your toll free number outside of the voicemail service you are considering because that’s your insurance and what keeps them honest. Voicemail services tend to be small and often play games with the ownership of the number. But if you get the number from an independent provider and transfer it into their service, you’re guaranteed to be able to transfer it away. In a small business, even if they don’t do a bad job, your needs are going to change. And your ability to transfer your 800 number is what keeps them honest and insures you’ll always have the best service and price.

So even though they’ll tell you that you can just get a number from them, that means you have to rely on the people that want to keep you there for your ability to transfer away. That’s kind of like leaving the kids in charge of guarding the cookie jar. It’s well worth just a little effort to not only insure that nobody can hold your business hostage, but to get the best most memorable number for your business.

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I use an analogy of Milk and Milkshakes to explain the difference between regular toll free service and enhanced voicemail service. Regular toll free service is pretty standard and just sends the calls directly to whatever local number you specify. And like milk, it tastes pretty much the same no matter what phone company you use, or what store you buy your milk from.

Milkshakes are made from milk but the extra features or flavors come from the extra stuff that they add to the milk. It’s not called milk with more flavors, it’s called a milkshake. But in toll free they don’t have a separate word for milkshakes; they just call it toll free with extra features or options. It’s not the toll free that is really different though, it’s the extra stuff they add to it that makes it different.

Variety

Milkshakes also vary more from store to store than milk does. That’s one of the reasons why it’s harder to compare enhanced voicemail services and why it’s also so much more important to get the right one for your business. They’re not all created equally like milk. They each have different strength and applications that they work best for. So it takes some experience to pick the right one. You can’t just start by looking just at the price the way people tend to with regular toll free service.

Price

Milkshakes are also more expensive than milk because you’re paying for the milk plus the other voicemail stuff too. Although they’re not that much more and if you can use the extra features they’re a great deal. Regular toll free service goes down to about 3 cents per minute and a couple bucks a month, for the cheapest ones. (Dedicated service usually gets down to about 2 cents per minute.)

Enhanced voicemail services are usually more like 5 cents per minute and $10 a month in round numbers, although just to confuse things further, some services try to be in between milk and milkshakes. That’s not all that much difference but it is a little more. And most larger regular carriers certainly charge that much or more anyway, so the difference obviously isn’t that great.

One more thing important thing on the topic of price and milk or milkshakes, is that you can pick milk based mainly on price. There are other things of course, but price is usually at least one of the main factors in selecting regular phone service. Picking a ‘milkshake’ based solely on price however, is harder and it usually doesn’t work. You may be expecting a chocolate milkshake and wind up with just chocolate milk. Not only are the features different but they call them different things and they probably work or sound different too. One of the biggest issues with the enhanced voicemail services is often the support which can vary more than you would expect with a regular phone company, because milk shake stands tend to be very small.

Size

It’s also a lot easier to start a milkshake stand and get into the milkshake business than it is to start a regular milk business (or phone company). You can put a trunk line into a server in your basement with some off the shelf software and a nice web page and you’re in business. It’s harder than a lemonade stand but it’s probably the easiest “phone company” you could start today, other than fake phone companies that just rebrand and resell someone else’s service, which is actually how some enhanced voicemail services (like gotvmail) actually started.

Milkshakes are great if that’s a fit with your business needs. But don’t be too nervous, if you get your number outside of the voicemail service you think you want to use it with, you can always change your mind. Your needs change fast in a small business and we guarantee you that flexibility (and portability) in case you get tired of that milkshake company. If your business grows and you want to switch the toll free service to your new office and receptionist nobody can stop you; or if you want it to go straight to your cell phone during the off season you can do anything you want because it’s YOUR number. Nobody can hold you hostage by your toll free number and make you use their service after you have advertised it everywhere, if you get it from TollFreeNumbers.com.

In continuing with the voicemail theme as I work on my TollFree Voicemail Guide, I’m working on a master list of all the toll free voicemail features that’ll be ready next week.

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Toll free voicemail services are much harder to compare than regular toll free service. That’s because the services and the features vary so much. And it doesn’t help any that in many cases they call the same feature by different names because they really don’t want you to be able to compare services. So I have worked hard to make a thorough list of all the voicemail features offered by all of the top enhanced voicemail services.

Reading the features is a good way to understand the potential of these powerful services and it’ll probably make you think of a few ways these things could help your business. I’ve broken the list down into 6 Categories. It is really to long for a single page on a website but if you print it, it should format pretty well on paper. And you’ll be able to highlight the important features for your benefit.

I hope this helps you to understand the benefits and features offered by most enhanced voicemail services. This is just a piece of my new Toll Free Voicemail Guide. If you have any additional questions post them in the comments field at the bottom.

1. Core Functions
2. Routing Functions
3. Management and Support Features
4. Terms
5. Advanced, Unusual and Extra fee items
6. Fax Functions.

See the full list of 60 toll free voicemail features

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