Google Voice for Churches #2

How did you know my name?

One of the best features of Google Voice as a free church software is personalization of voice mail greetings. You have the ability to create a custom individual voice mail greeting specific for each person or group in your contact list.

In addition to setting up Google Voice for our Nursery Ministry, I had also set up an account for myself.

The first time I used this feature I began by creating a couple of joke messages for specific people in my contact list. Now, you can actually prank only certain people on your list without messing up your message for your general list. Just make sure you go over your messages to make sure they are matched to the right people!

The message went something like this… Hello. Hello? Yeah, I can’t hear you. What’s that? Speak up? Ok, just leave a message then.

Of course this is not what you want to do with your general list. But it is funny for a select few. You can get them multiple times with that one especially if they only call you every once in awhile.

The second time I used it I received a much better response. A member of our video team called and I had created an individualized message for him. It was not creative, but just specific to him. I started by using his name and then said I could not get to the phone, but to please leave a message.

He told me later that he actually responded and started talking to me thinking I was really on the phone when I used his name. He is very knowledgeable about tech, but was blown away by how I did this. How could I have a specific message for him? He was amazed.People in your ministry will be amazed too when you create specific messages for them. People want to be remembered and valued. This is actually a way to build in that experience and put it on autopilot.