Atos Unify OpenScape Voice vs. Google Voice

We have used 3rd party companies who have set up Unify for our customer sites and often it goes well. From a network perspective we often don't need to get involved too much and the set ups are often straight forward. This prevents us having to allocate engineers to new implementations.

[Google Voice is] great if you have a workforce that needs to make calls for business purposes from their personal mobile device, while keeping their personal phone number private. If you have a large company with its own telecom system, it probably won't be necessary if employees already have their own landlines or separate work phones.

Incentivized

• Good integration with other system
• Smart features and web applications
• Good cloud and non-cloud options

• Google Voice has been great for setting up additional phone lines and numbers.
• The voicemail inbox is a great feature and you can see when messages come in online and listen to the messages from your computer.
• Google Voice allows us to have multiple phone numbers and lines for specific business purposes.

Incentivized

• Phone application could be improved
• Troubleshooting can be difficult
• Can rely on a solid network and internet connection

• It can be tricky to configure exactly how you want it. If you are particular about which voicemail greeting goes to which number, and how it appears when it rings through to the phone - it can take a good amount of work to set it up properly.

Incentivized

It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice

Clients seem to understand new feature sets early on and we don't have to allocate too much time to training. This creates a low learning curve across the board which can be essential when implementing new communication methods. The call quality and application support is generally very good and we don't have many calls logged for issues.

I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.

Incentivized

They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.

Incentivized

It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype

Incentivized

As we predominantly have a cisco environment we have used Cisco VOIP solutions in the past, which obviously integrate very well, however Unify does an excellent job at integrating into our networks with out problems and doesn't require too much manual configuring or changes.

Google Voice at the peak of its adoption did serve as a very real and effective solution. However bugs persisted, and innovation lacked, and support for the product soon declined. However, there are several other solutions provided that focus on making one product as best as it could be. Google made it clear to me as a customer, that this was a backup for a backup. When you look at the simplicity on its own, it appears to be fantastic, however as you dive deeper, and experience its lack of smooth edges, you find that it's been built by engineers who were given a scope, rather than solving for a use case and listening to customer feedback. Many of the other solutions available on the market, see this opportunity. This is why voice communication is a growing SaaS vertical, albeit competitive. Understanding the customer here is key, and Google understands what drives value to the larger organization. As a business owner, I understand, that when a business has to allocate resources, another department, or service suffers. Unfortunately this product feels to be the one that has met that fate

Incentivized

• Ease of use gives clients peace of mind
• Easily customisable
• Administratively very convenient

• Google Voice has saved us a lot of time in regards to overall productivity.
• Google Voice allows us to operate at a greater scale than without it.
• Google voice allows us to track which advertisements are working best.
• Google Voice allows us to spend less time listening to voicemails.

Incentivized