Don’t get me wrong, we love to brag about all the features in our b-hive UCaaS platform — after all, they are pretty great! But one of my favorites is visual voicemail. Most of our customers have a vague idea of what it is from their cellphones, but the b-hive UCaaS platform takes it to the next level.

Why?

Let’s dive in!

What is Visual Voicemail?

Don’t let the name confuse you — I promise, you already use this feature every day without realizing it. Basically, visual voicemail creates a transcription of your voicemail.

Let’s say your doctor calls, but you don’t answer because you’re in a meeting. So, she leaves you a voicemail. Without visual voicemail, you would call your voicemail box, enter your password, and then listen to your voicemails in order.

Let’s see how this scenario plays out with visual voicemail. Your doctor calls while you’re in a meeting, and you send it to voicemail. When your meeting is done, you can go to your voicemail (usually in the Phone app) and either listen to the audio or read a transcription of the message. The transcription even provides a hyperlink to the phone number left in the voicemail so you can return the call directly from the message.

Sound familiar?

What is Visual Voicemail in the b-hive UCaaS platform?

We’ve taken the basics of visual voicemail and added a twist for business communications. With b-hive UCaaS, every time you receive a voicemail, you receive an email with information about the call (the caller ID, phone number, and a timestamp), and the audio message is attached. This creates an “inbox” of voicemails that you can listen to and manage with ease.

You can listen to the message, download it for later, forward it to an email contact, or delete the message. The best part is that all of this is done from your email. Anywhere you have email access, you have voicemail access from your phone, your computer, or the b-hive Communicator app. You can also respond to the voicemail via text, call, or email.

b-hive Pro users also have access to voicemail-to-email transcription. This means that a transcription of the audio message appears in the body of the email along with the audio file and the call information.

Want to learn more about the features of b-hive Communicator? Check out this blog post.

What are the Benefits of Visual Voicemail?

There are several benefits to using visual voicemail, such as:

• Accessibility. Anywhere you have email access, you have voicemail access. Plus, it’s accessible by phone and computer, so you can stay connected wherever you are.
• Productivity. You can prioritize messages and screen calls using caller ID.
• Convenience. Visual voicemail allows you to organize and manage your voicemails the same way you manage your email.
• Ease of use. With visual voicemail, you can listen to messages directly from your smartphone without calling a separate system.
• Efficiency. Visual voicemail simplifies workflows by letting you return calls from the same screen. Plus, you can pick which voicemails you see instead of listening to them chronologically.

Ready to add visual voicemail to your cloud communications? Chat with one of our consultants to learn more.

This post was first published on April 18, 2023 and was updated on February 15, 2024.