Today, with all of the amazing features peo­ple have on their Smart phones and for texting, voicemail management still remains a mystery. Many voicemails people receive may be for an order or confirmation of a project, or to re­mind you not to forget to pick up milk on the way home.

I have no definitive confirmation that Google Voice will be going away, but rumors are that Google Voice will be integrated to Google Hangout, wherein users will be able to make and receive calls. Though I am a Google fan, I am not that thrilled to use Hangout. I ac­tually haven’t used it but once, and that was just to test it.

One will go to Google and get a Google Voice number. Once activated, one can for­ward one’s calls to his/her cell phone and have some privacy if this is for a small busi­ness. One can even setup simul-ring, which will ring multiple phones. The Voicemails are then sent to your Google Voice ac­count and Gmail inbox as an attachment. You can hear the voicemails and add the number as a contact to your Google Con­tacts. The Google Voice app can replace the carrier’s Voicemail. I am a Sprint user and forwarded my Sprint Voicemail to Google Voice. Read further as to why I switched.

As a new Google function, you can cre­ate multiple greetings and greet one per­son one way, another person another way. This is helpful if you have a greeting for business clients and a greeting for fami­ly. The voicemails then can be sent to you and transcribed via text. Though when you have a name like Shneur my name can be Shmear, Snail, and other variations, it’s still a great way to see and read your voicemails.

Gmail or Google Voice are frustrating because you cannot create folders. This really is painful when you have a ton of voicemails in one large folder.

Recently, I called a client and heard the following: “Hello Shneur, blank isn’t here right now, but leave a voicemail af­ter the tone.” I was super impressed by this and did some research. The product is called YouMail and is similar to Google Voice. There is a real quick sign-up process with sending texts to verify who you are. One can not only pick and create different greetings, you can choose from some hu­morous greetings people can hear. YouMail has the ability to have different greetings for different users, just as Google Voice has.

What made me switch is you can have YouMail greet your callers by their own name and it will say your name as well. YouMAil even has a comment box to teach it how to say your name; i.e., Shneur sounds like Shn-air. For business users you can even add a 0 live-connect feature. Now when users call my voicemail and my busi­ness greeting it says, “Hello, David, you have reached Shneur at the Garb Consult­ing Group. Leave a voicemail or press 0 for support.” The zero will go to my office line. This is a really amazing feature. There is a fee for the service and features, which can be found on their site at http://www.you­mail.com/. A plan that can be added for a nominal fee is to have YouMail have a live person transcribe your voicemails and text them to you. This might not be private, but it sure is useful.

One can also have the caller hear: “Sh­neur is unavailable from 2:00–5:00 p.m. Please leave a voicemail and Shneur will return your call after his meeting.”

But what really hooked me, besides that you can import your contacts from Gmail, AOL, and other email providers, is that you can create different folders in which to save all your voicemails. The app resides on your phone and will tell you if you have a new voicemail besides the text. It will even text you the number if some­one hangs up on you.

Google Voice has the ability to tell a caller your number is disconnected for those marketing calls no one wants. You­Mail will also tell callers you will not ac­cept calls from blocked or no-caller-ID call­ers. There are some amazing features that may interest those users who rely on voice­mails. Of course, there is a fee for YouMail.

Does anyone remember a time when you left a message on a good old-fashioned tape answering machine? Then you didn’t expect a call back from that person for at least one day or two. Today’s etiquette is 24 hours.

How far we have come with messaging and voicemails. I prefer a phone call over any four-page text. It is frustrating to have a text version when one call could save so much time and miscommunication. But I know I am in the minority on that one.

If you have any questions or comments, Shneur Garb can be reached at [email protected]. Shneur is the CEO at The Garb IT Consulting Group in Teaneck, NJ.

By Shneur Garb