With many well-known carrier companies trying to give voicemail a modern makeover, you’ve probably heard the term “visual voicemail” thrown around a lot lately.

But do you really know what visual voicemail is? Let’s find out. Which of the following do you think of when you hear the phrase visual voicemail?

(a.) Your voicemail transcribed into text so you can read it

(b.) A list of your voicemail messages so you don’t have to dial in

(c.) Both

If your answer was A, you are in line with the majority of consumers. But it’s actually incorrect. Visual Voicemail is simply a list of your voicemail messages in a visual interface. And a text transcription of your voicemail is an optional feature. So the correct answer was B, but sometimes it can also be C.

Now that you know what visual voicemail is – why would you want it? There are tons of different ways visual voicemail can improve your productivity. It has everything you need to improve your communication with coworkers, clients, and other important callers.

Here are 5 Ways to Boost Productivity with Visual Voicemail

  1. Handle Messages Quickly – When you don’t have to call in to your voicemail inbox to hear your new messages, you can get to the details a lot faster. Scan through your messages in a clean list and easily locate one from a few days or a week ago.
  2. More Convenient Inbox Cleaning – visual voicemail also means you don’t have to sit through an automated menu telling you which number to hit on your keypad to erase, skip, or save a voicemail. This can all easily be done in your visual voicemail app.
  3. Find Important Messages – Since visual voicemail tells you the length of each message, you’ll see an important voicemail before you even listen to it. The simple, “call me back” message will only be a few seconds long whereas a client calling about urgent information will leave you one that’s much longer. If you need to find an important voicemail a few days later, you can easily scroll through your list and find all the messages that are longer than usual.
  4. Get Voicemail on the Go – It can be really difficult to get through voicemail messages when you’re somewhere outside of your home or office. Imagine walking to meet a client or standing in line at a coffee shop and pressing numbers on your phone just to listen to your three new messages or find the one that has your client’s home phone number in it. With visual voicemail, just open your app and hit play.
  5. Optional Transcriptions – As stated earlier, voicemail transcriptions are available for some visual voicemail plans. Add transcriptions to your visual voicemail and you won’t have to listen to your voicemail at all. You’ll easily find specific messages and get through lengthy voicemail in no time.

How to get visual voicemail: YouMail visual voicemail is completely free! You get access to all of your messages in an organized list complete with photo ID’s of your callers or their location if they aren’t in your contact list. Plus, you also get a wider variety of voicemail greetings, you can store 100 voicemail messages, and access your voicemail from your phone, computer, and tablet. That’s taking visual voicemail to a whole other level! Check out YouMail visual voicemail in the Google Play or Apple App Store today and check out our subscription plans for transcriptions.