Posts Tagged ‘Google Voice’

By Joe Klein

To the best of my recollection (without going back and checking the NMC Blog Archives) this is one of the first, or, perhaps the first time we have posted a blog article about a new media-related service. And we don’t make a habit of writing articles that are very technically-oriented. After all, there are hundreds, if not tens of thousands of tech blogs out there for the taking.

But, having just implemented GOOGLE VOICE as a solution for the telecommunications needs of New Media Creative, I was almost immediately impressed enough with the service to, well…..BLOG about it!

Looks like my timing to post this story was pretty right on, because a search for Google Voice on Google itself just before witing this post returned a host of Google News results about this great new service that have broken over the last month or two. But more on that later on in this post.

For the last few years, since starting our original new media services company THE PODCAST VOICE GUYS, we’ve been employing the SKYPE service as a telecommunications and VO/IP solution for the company. Not only was it a relatively inexpensive method for making business calls, especially to point overseas, but the ability of SKYPE to allow us to place calls from our computers and feed the recording chain of our digital software directly into the SKYPE network was a great boon to the company. Particularly useful was to be able to call clients and let them “listen in live” as we recorded voice tracks for them, in a way very similar to (but infinitely less expensive) than the method used by big ad agencies and media networks to connect announcers to remote studios for over two decades. (This method incorporated the use of expensive, dedicated digital telephone lines, called ISDN lines.) Our clients loved being able to, in effect, “direct” the announcer recording the voice tracks for their project from virtually anywhere in the world! Even better, if the client had a computer with SKYPE software installed and a decent set of speakers, he, she, or they could hear their voice tracks in pretty decent fidelity.

Depending on the speed and integrity of the internet connection (and a few other technical factors I won’t bother to explain here), our clients have been able to hear the announcer in “near studio” quality. Even at its worst, it’s still much better audio quality than listening to a recording session over a plain old telephone line. So worthwhile was this SKYPE feature that we even gave it a name back in 2005. We dubbed the added service “Skype-Session-Recording” or “SSR” for short.

Free “Skype-To-Skype” calling, low rates for calling domestic and international land line and cell phones, plus the ability to offer our “SSR” feature at no additional charge to the client truly did make SKYPE a “great call” for us. And we still use it to this day for recording sessions and international calls.

But things at SKYPE have changed over the last couple of years, and, regrettably, not for the better. Late in 2005 (not too long after we started using SKYPE), the service was purchased by Ebay for a reported sum of around $3 BILLION! (Here is the official press release from October of 2005 of the acquisition.) It was the hope of the hugely successful online auction behemoth that the SKYPE service would complement and integrate well with the Ebay site and offer a new method of instant live communication between sellers and buyers. Plans were to have some sort of “Call The Seller” button an auction listings. But, obviously, the plan just didn’t unfold. For whatever reason, voice interactivity was never implemented on the Ebay site. Perhaps Ebay realized that sellers probably did not desire the added ability to be contacted directly by auction buyers with live questions day and night.

It’s been widely reported that SKYPE was, for the most part, a big financial disappointment for Ebay, practically from the start. The decision not to integrate the SKYPE service into Ebay happened early on after the acquisition. In an effort to bolster the bottom line, the company began to implement other means to generate revenue and achieve a return on their investment. The cost to consumers for using the “almost free” service began to change. While basic SKype-to-Skype calling has remained free, new pricing structures, subscription plans, repackaging of existing services and a few new “premium” level services have been introduced over the last few years in a pretty confusing parade of changes, but the net result of it all, as has been the case with so many other internet-based services that launched as “free” and later moved to fee-based models, was that SKYPE now started costing, or cost more to use.

This, in itself, is understandable, and, as a capitalist myself, in not being condemned by me. But, along with the increase in cost to use SKYPE came a slow decline in one very important aspect of the service, that being CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Advances in internet technology, technology in general and the exponential expansion of broadband availability and adoption by consumers contributed to a measurable degree of technical improvement in the SKYPE service overall. But, at the same time, the “customer service” component of SKYPE, barely existent from the service’s inception, took a slide to non-existent in the years that followed the acquisition of the service by Ebay. By last year, customer service, for all intents and purposes, simply did not exist for SKYPE subscribers. There was no way to speak live with a CSR at SKYPE. The only way to “contact customer service” was to fill out a request online. There was no way at all to contact a customer service representative at SKYPE and talk with him or her “live.” How ironic was this for a VO/IP service that was acquired by Ebay primarily as a means to facilitate live voice communication between sellers and buyers of merchandise?

Even worse, customer support requests submitted online were answered after long delays (of several days or even weeks) after being submitted, and the answers were, for the most part, “scripted" responses that did not directly address the issue submitted. If a subscriber persisted with repeated inquiries, they were answered, at best, with personalized responses often composed by low-wage employees who did not even speak the native language of the subscriber who submitted the inquiry.

Adding to the “customer-unfriendly” scenario was the company website’s product sales pages, which failed to accurately describe the products and services offered in detail and left prospective customers confused and bewildered (myself included), scratching their heads trying to figure out exactly what services were available and how much they cost.

Finally, if all of the problems with sales efforts (which were practically devoid in any event) and customer service (totally devoid for the last couple of years) weren’t enough, SKYPE even dropped the ball with their billing process. But, unlike the profitable “nickel-and-diming” overcharging of consumers being perpetrated on countless millions of consumers of other media and telecommunications service (and I won’t name names here) on a constant basis, SKYPE actually committed the UNTHINKABLE capitalist act of allowing the money-collecting functions of their business to malfunction and fail. Hundreds of thousands of SKYPE accounts signed up for “automatic payments” via credit card were simply cut-off, after the credit cards on file were mistakenly not charged or the card information was lost!

The last straw for New Media Creative came a few months ago when the credit card on file with SKYPE that we provided was repeatedly not charged and our subscription was canceled. In all fairness, as it turns out, we were partly to blame, as the email on file with SKYPE that we had provided for notifications had changed and we failed to update it, but, that being said, the credit card on file with SKYPE was still valid and it was the SKYPE billing system that failed to charge the card and initiated the account termination.

So, okay. We have vented here, and published to the world our own limited recounts of SKYPE and views on the service. Now, on to the primary subject of this blog post, that being our early praise for the recently announced GOOGLE VOICE service.

If you’ve read this far, you already know about the positives and negatives of the SKYPE service. As of last month, our company phone number, actually a “Skype-In” number (or whatever in the world it is called now) had been “disconnected” twice and, for us, enough was enough. If the disconnection wasn’t enough, repeated attempts to migrate the number from our old company SKYPE account (under the name “PODCASTVOICEGUYS”) to our current company account with SKYPE (with the name “NEWMEDIACREATIVE”) were fruitless. After repeated attempts to accomplish this migration and get a clear and understandable response from Skype’s “customer service” failed, we simply allowed the number to, for the second time, expire. (Those of you who have tried to contact our company through our primary office phone line may have reached a “not in service” recording at times over the last few months and, for that, we are embarrassed and do sincerely apologize.)

Being one of the “old skooI” members of New Media Creative, I admit that I am often a bit “behind the curve” of the very latest technology trends and news and, silly me, I only first learned of the “Grand Central” VO/IP service in June of last year when I happened on a year-old article by Mike Arrington on TechCrunch about the planned acquisition of the company by Google! Even at that time last summer, I was still pretty satisfied with our SKYPE account and did not persue the Grand Central service any further. But, early this year, just as I was beginning to become disgruntled with the customer service end of SKYPE, a significant degree of buzz was building about the rebranding of Grand Central as Google Voice and all the positive aspects of the service. A few of my friends, who, like me, were former die-hard “phone phreaks” from the sixties and seventies, were buzzing as well, and we were all filled with eager anticipation about this highly-anticipated new Google-backed VO/IP offering.

One of those phone phreaks is a close friend of mine for nearly forty years named MARK ROBBINS, a good-natured, generous and wonderfully gifted guy who has always loved to “tinker” in nearly all-things tech. Mark created and wrote the code for LAPLINK, one of the world’s most popular early software programs and was a founding partner in TRAVELING SOFTWARE that marketed the innovative data transfer application back in the eighties. Mark, himself, was enamored with Google Voice and signed up for an early invitation to the service months ago. Soon thereafter, he added me to the invitation list, and I received my own invite to create a Google Voice account in late July.

It took me until just about a week ago (after finally deciding to abandon SKYPE as the provider of the New Media Creative office telephone service in August) to finally sign up for Google Voice. And, as the title of this post proclaims, it almost immediately proved itself as nothing short of a “perfect fit!”

Learning about the details of the service wasn’t “easy as pie,” but, in stark contrast to SKYPE, it was far easier and more and straightforward to figure out what Google Voice had to offer than to figure out what is currently available on SKYPE from visiting the online pages of the service. Even better, all of the services offered by Google Voice (with the exception of international calling) are, currently, free! And, best of all, signing up and activating the service, including picking an area code and phone number was relatively simple and pain-free. I was actually able to pick a number that was identical to my existing cell-phone number, with the exception of the very first digit after the (same) area code! How cool is that?

Once I enabled the account and the new company phone number was activated, the “love-fest” with Google Voice began! I was thrilled and overjoyed, feeling like that very young “phone phreak” all over again as I quickly learned and experienced the myriad of capabilities and functionality that this very cool VO/IP service offers.

Sparing another paragraph or two of technical details, suffice it to say that Google Voice does just about everything well that SKYPE now falls short in. While we cannot use Google Voice to connect our recording chain directly to our clients (something that we will happily continue to use SKYPE for as long as it’s available), the service immediately proved itself worthy of all our other VO/IP needs! It has all sorts of great ways to route our new “office line” anywhere we want—to other land lines, cell phones or whatever. Google Voice even offers the absolute coolest voice mail service around. The voice mail includes (at no charge, of course) the service of emailing not just notifications of voice mails, but actual TRANSCRIPTIONS of the voice messages as well. It even allows “passing through” of SMS text messages to a cell phone number that the Google Voice primary number is forwarded to. How cool is all this?

Okay, sales pitch over. I’m not, in any way, a paid spokesperson for Google Voice, nor do I even have any kind of affiliate relation with this service. (For the time being, it’s all but free anyway!) But, still, I’ve got nothing but the highest praise and recommendation for this invaluable service. Let’s hope it stays free, or, at the least, continues on in its present incarnation at a low cost, (which I, for one, would gladly pay). Let’s also hope that the service keeps improving, rather than experiencing the down-side of a huge high-tech corporate take-over, as SKYPE did.

So, wouldn’t you know it, just as I decided to post this long (and, admittedly, tiring) blog post about Google Voice, that, as I mentioned early on in this article, Google Voice, along with SKYPE, have become the subjects of high-profile tech stories of late. In early September it was reported that a pending sale of SKYPE was imminent. The price was not disclosed, but reports had the sale pegged at somewhere around the $2 billion dollar mark, which would result in about a $1 billion loss to Ebay. On the heels of that story, Google Voice was back in the news when Apple refused to allow the service to be migrating into its popular iPhone as an application. A few days ago, a story in the Wall Street Journal stated that the service was likely come under scrutiny and, earlier today came the breaking news that Google Voice is now the subject of an FCC probe, following a claim just filed by Telecommunications giant AT&T accusing the Google Voice service of restricting connectivity to to other carriers.

Why are we not all surprised? Sorry to be the voice of skepticism here, but I have to pose the question: If a new service or product is too good to be true, is it’s fate ultimately doomed?

Time will tell. In the meantime, If this useful, versatile and cost saving service interests you, I would encourage you to try it out, At this time, Google voice is available by invitation only, but you can request and invitation here and you’ll get an email from Google Voice when the service is available for you or your company.

Our enthusiasm and support is confirmed by the Google Voice widget that now appears predominantly at the top our website’s sidebar! Click on the badge and say hello, or add  your own comment to this long-winded story and let us and the world know your thoughts!

(***UPDATED ON OCTOBER 8, 2009***) Michael Arrington, a well known tech blogger and evangelist, posted a pretty geeky story on Tech Crunch about the fight for SKYPE that is now playing out.