Will Google Voice Become Usable?

[Thomas_plus]

As it stands now, Google Voice has great potential, but there are so many basic features missing it is completely unusable for lots of SMBs. 

• Cannot call out from "Main Line"
• Cannot receive or send text messages from "Main Line"
• No shared contact lists
• All "departments" require their own line instead of being able to call out from the "Main Line"

As a consumer, I only want one number to call a business, not several. I also want to be able to text that business when I can not or do not want to talk.

As a business owner, I want my team calling out from one, recognizable phone number. I want our customers to be able to text us with questions... and I NEED my team to be see a shared contact list with history, etc.

I really hope Google Voice gets these basic features soon... It would be hard to beat in the Workspace suite. 

[cryptochrome]

Fully agreed. Google Voice is just an overpriced, seemingly abandoned barebones product at this point. Check out Dialpad (the company founded by the original Google Voice creators) or for something more simple, yet fully functional, Aircall. 

[Thomas_plus]

We currently use Dialpad (and have since it launched as Switch) it has everything we need, but it's becoming a service focused entirely on large sales teams and call centers, and even more importantly, the service has become unusable on my teams devices in the field. Missed and dropped calls awful call quality, frustrated customers, frustrated team members. On the flip side, the Google Voice test lines we have work great in the field... it's the rest of Google Voice that's useless. 

[cryptochrome]

Thanks for sharing your experience with Dialpad. I never tried the product myself but it looked great "on paper". You saved me some time 🙂

[alex_coombs]

Just replying to state that I agree as well. Hopefully someone sees this and they can kickstart more features for Google Voice.

[PatrickWynn]

Hi, I'm part of the Voice PM team. Thank you for taking the time to share this feedback.

• Calling as Ring Group number is currently available, but not yet for Auto-attendants (often used for main line numbers). We're looking into extending this in the future, so hopefully can share more later.
• Would like to learn more about the Main Line SMS use-case. Is this as an alternative for p2p communication or also for the purposes of initiating outbound comms (i.e. not necessarily just in response to someone sending a message to the main line number)?
• Re. shared contact lists, can you share more about how this is done outside of Voice today? For context, Voice supports real-time lookup from device, personal and directory contacts.

Thanks again!

[mark240]

Hi Patrick. I've been waiting for more than a YEAR since Google Voice promised porting Canadian numbers. What's the holdup? How long more? So many other countries already porting.

We can't move to GV until we can bring our business' phone numbers.

[PatrickWynn]

Thanks for the question. We're aware of the need here however requirements for Canadian number management have made progress here slower than expected.

[mark240]

Hi Patrick. 14 months ago GV published phrase "coming soon" for Canadian porting, so your comment "slower than expected" is, um, 'apt'.

Google Voice has been "available" in Canada all that time, *so perhaps you can share a timeline for this rather mission-critical component?*

Is 2 months possible? Is 14 more possible? The delay of this weird longevity makes us wonder if there is something immovable for Canada, since GV seems to have easily solved this in countries all over the world. If that's the case, *please say so*.

[PatrickWynn]

Thanks for your patience. This is available now.

[Thomas_plus]

Hey Partick, thank you for responding.

• Calling as Ring Group number is currently available, but not yet for Auto-attendants (often used for main line numbers). We're looking into extending this in the future, so hopefully can share more later. 
  
  • I'm aware of the ring group option but I really do not want that and need to be able to disable it so my team isn't calling out from 'random' numbers that are not the main line.
• Would like to learn more about the Main Line SMS use-case. Is this as an alternative for p2p communication or also for the purposes of initiating outbound comms (i.e. not necessarily just in response to someone sending a message to the main line number)?
  
  • Yes alternative to p2p since almost everyone can text, but not everyone is on, nor do I wish to manage, 500 different messages service (I know you're Google, but really... hah). Our customers text our main line with job photos, questions, service requests etc. an we both reply and initiate text messages to our customer for all kinds of things (lead follow ups, reminders, ETAs, etc.).
• Re. shared contact lists, can you share more about how this is done outside of Voice today? For context, Voice supports real-time lookup from device, personal and directory contacts.
  • We currently use Dialpad (You all should look at their mainline/department offerings/setup they are near perfect). Each users Google Contacts syncs into a personal "address book", there is a internal directory, and there is a shared address book with all external contacts which is EASILY accessible from within the app. I've never experienced anything easy about shared external contacts and Google.

I am really wanting to consolidate our services into Workspace and those are the items that prevent us from using Voice. 

[PatrickWynn]

Thanks for sharing the context. It sounds like you're aware of the shared external contacts management available via API, but as noted there is no ready-made UI. Several simple scripts have been shared to the Marketplace however. Such external shared contacts should also resolve in Google Voice.

[Thomas_plus]

Correct. Re: Shared Contacts; My feeling is that I shouldn't need to involve third party apps/scripts or implement the API and jump through other hoops just to have a feature set that should be a basic function of a business phone offering. 

[PatrickWynn]

Got it. Thanks for the confirmation.

[Thomas_plus]

Just checking in to see if there is any update on ... well any of the above.

Thanks!

[scain]

We'd also like to use GV for SMS in Canada, to send and receive messages to a specific number. 

[BC-Evan]

We have been happy with RingCentral. Full SSO with Google, great browser plugins, etc.

We are also a partner so take that bias as you will. DM me if you want a quote.

[dominik]

So here is the setup for Main Line Calling:

• Ring Group with no Membecs only callers
• Ringgroups fail condition is Auto Attendant
• Auto attendant distributes into all other ring goups
• Members in departmental ring goups can't call out from those
• You can now only call out from personal number or Main Line

@PatrickWynn i am happy to give some more feedback on Voice too. It really needs some upgrades.

[PatrickWynn]

Thanks - appreciate the detail. Yes, this the kind of setup we'd like to help simplify as mentioned above. 

[dominik]

@PatrickWynn is there an update to this and its timeline? 

[BriarBeard]

Thank you @dominik After many months of searching, you seem to have found the workaround! I really appreciate this post! Do you know if there is a way to call from the ring group (mainline) number from a desktop phone? That's the last hurdle I need to overcome.

[SSaldana825]

Similar to Thomas, I am a co-owner of a small psychology practice. We recently moved to Google Voice (much better overall than our old, outdated telephone system), but were disappointed to realize that the owners are unable to call out from our main number. The main number had to be the assigned auto-attendant number and because of this, we don't have the option to use it as a call out number. As a business owner similar to what Thomas indicated in his original post, we want our main number to be the 'brand' that folks recognize when they see it on their phones. Otherwise, we are now just random Voice numbers calling folks with no visual connection to our business. 

[dominik]

The frustration is understandable for sure. I hope that my answer above (see here) can help you solve for this problem. 

It will also enable you to assign people who are not part of the auto attendant to enable call outs.  In this case the doctor may not need to receive calls on their own account but should be able to call out through that primary phone number. 

It is not a very clean option but it is certainly an option.  

The ring group with the primary phone number looks like this: 

 

[Thomas_plus]

@PatrickWynn Is there any news on Google Voice you can share? Updates? Roadmaps? Anything? I see new features like auto call recording rolling out to the Premier tier, but nothing on the missing basics.

Any response is much appreciated.

[avanbeek]

Eagerly awaiting updates myself.  Very promising service.  Was a great switch away from plain old telephone service.  But it is definitely lacking in some key features.

• Can call out from ring group number via voice phone app or from web app, but not via desk phone.
  • Temporary partial solution would be at least allowing individual lines to forward all incoming calls back to the main line or ring group so anyone can answer.  It still keeps it very confusing when a customer receives calls from so many different numbers though.

• Cannot use SMS via main line or ring group numbers.
  • At least allow for incoming SMS messages to be forwarded to individuals, even if no way to reply

[icrew]

You might want to post this to the Feature Ideas section here. Doing so will allow it to be upvoted by others and possibly considered as a future feature enhancement.

If you do not already have access, you need to request it first. See https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/custom/page/page-id/Workspace-Feature-Ideas-FAQ for how to do that.

Once you have access, go to https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/gh-p/workspace-ideas-group . There, you can upvote and comment on any similar idea, or post a new idea.

If you are submitting a feature idea, be sure to explain the problem that you're trying to solve with the feature idea, not just the idea itself. For example, saying "when my users are trying to do 'A', they often get confused by the fact that the buttons to do 'X' and to do 'Y' look quite similar to each other, which leads to this unintended consequence" is far more likely to get fixed than a feature idea that just says "change the color of the button 'Y'".

Cheers,

Ian

[Thomas_plus]

I did... over a year ago.

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/Google-Voice-Main-Line-Needs/idi-p/80476

[Thomas_plus]

Annual check in on this.... Any news?

[stacie]

Hi all,

REALLY hoping that google brains have figured out how to make this a "real" option for business use. My small law office had used GV's free version for years, and recently upgraded to the workspace, paid GV accounts. Our experience has been for the worse with the paid version. So much so that we're strongly considering rolling back to the free version. The main problems are the ones identified in this string:

1.  customers are used to texting us pictures of documents, etc and they can no longer do so because our main office number is assigned to a ring group. (It's necessary to assign our main number to a ring group because there appears to be no other way to cycle through employees when a call comes in- for example, if our main secretary is not available, it rolls over to the next admin and so on.) There's no way to forward a GV call to another GV number for some reason using the settings within GV. (I tried this as a workaround to the issue of contact list fail, below, thinking that I could set up a separate license for the main line, and then forward the calls to the ring group. Nope.) Ridiculous imho.

2. Contacts list fail- each individual user license can upload our full contact list, but not any number assigned to the ring group- again, this is our main number. I cannot understand how there's no option in the admin panel to upload the contacts list. Major fail.

If there's really no way to address these issues, we're rolling back to the free version. The main reason that we upgraded is to be able to transfer calls to the team while they're working remotely. Who knew we'd lose major functionality of the system by upgrading!

PLEASE please please fix this, google!

Thanks,

Stacie

[Thomas_plus]

Agreed!

[TritonResto]

The most basic feature this service should have is the ability to upload a voice greeting. I can understand the free version not having this capability, but my god I am paying a monthly subscription and cannot upload a professional greeting. If I had the voice to do it, I would be a voice actor!!

[Thomas_plus]

Google Voice doesn't currently do much right, but they do let you upload your own audio for voicemail greetings on ring groups. 

[blakemcneely]

Absolutely. I really hope the all in one solution finds its way to us soon.

I also would like to see the ability to delegate access to text messages, similar to how one does in Gmail for an executive assistant. 

[dapnc]

I would love to get the ability to assign a user/number to multiple desk phones so phone can be answered from different work locations.

[lmorser]

Hi- Is there a way to have my business name show up on the caller ID outgoing? It just says a city name and the number right now. I've asked a tech but didn't get a response. Someone I called the other day said that my number came up "Spam Risk." Not happy.

[KAM]

@lmorser your are mentioning two separate issues: #1, no, to my knowledge, Google Voice does not subscribe to any CNAM databases so there are no names provided by Caller ID.  #2, the Spam Risk, soulds like an android phone using a different database based on complaints from people called with that number.  HTH, KAM