Dear Dan: E-mail totally rules how our business communicates. But e-mailing outside the office and on the road often proves difficult. Anything new that can help?
– e-Mailer
Dear e-Mailer: Recently, while stopped at a traffic light I saw a frustrated-looking delivery driver furiously “typing” on a pocket PC – perhaps sending an e-mail. For business e-mail on the go, better solutions have emerged.
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Voice-to-e-mail is a way to create and send e-mails by simply speaking them. Services costing less than $10 per month let mobile business owners or workers easily dictate and share time-sensitive information with a dispatcher, central office or other location. You speak it, and the system sends it via e-mail immediately.
Why not just talk? Two reasons, really: speed and accuracy. Getting people on the phone can be difficult. And when you do, some are prone to jabbering on when you don’t have the time. And getting your message across accurately can be troublesome too, especially technical information, locations or instructions.
Whether the tasks at hand are selling, driving, hauling waste or fixing PCs, voice-to-e-mail is a simple but powerful business tool that’s just getting started.
For example, SkyMail lets business subscribers wirelessly dictate documents or messages to an individual or group by simply making a call from their regular cell phone.
There are no armies of typists madly transcribing voice messages into text. Rather, your spoken message is recorded and delivered to recipients as an audio e-mail.
It’s dictation on the fly. As a sender, you select a pre-assigned recipient or subject line from your mobile phone contact list and speak.
And it works on most cell phones and handhelds with calling capabilities, without any software to download or complicated menus to navigate. The recipient receives an e-mail with a link to the voice message and a box that lets them reply with a text message to your phone.
From the sender’s perspective, it’s just another phone call. Touching “send” on your cell phone activates the service. And since there’s no capital investment or equipment required, small companies can easily try it out.
• SkyMail, at www.skymail.net, offers a free 30-day trial and works with Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon. You can view an online demo at the Web site.
• CallWave.com offers a related service they call “visual voicemail.”
• eVoice (www.evoice.com) will deliver your voicemail by e-mail. Just click on the messages you want and listen instantly.
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
