Brad Slavin

Google Voice Now For Cell Phones

My favorite Google Voice feature is the ability to have all of my voice-mails transcribed and emailed to me. Most of the time there is about an  eighty percent accuracy, or when it stumbles I can listen to the audio directly.  For me it is a huge time saver when I am on the road or at a conference.

One of my biggest failings with Google Voice is that it was just not able to handle the voice-mail of my most common phone…my cell phone.  Well the folks at Google have done it again and that feature is now available  your cell phone  because of a a new Google Voice feature.

The way it works is that Google handles the call via the remote call forward feature, the person on the other end of the phone hears a short announcement that Google Voice is trying to locate you, then your phone greeting is played and Google intercepts the recording.  I must admit that this is pretty slick!  I used to use a service to transcribe my emails but having the power of Google – this tops my list of favorite new cloud services.

To activate, click on the settings button in your Google Voice account and if you have your cell phone defined there will be an option to activate the service on your account.  You then have to identify your phone Carrier, mine is Sprint and then you enter in a string of numbers to enable remote call forwarding.

The entire process took about 45 seconds to complete, and now I get my voice-mail transcribed and emailed to my phone. You do loose the ability to call into your Sprint voice-mail and retrieve your messages – but I have not yet encountered an issue where I needed to worry about this.

Brad Slavin

Positive Online Reviews:
A simple template to send to your clients

Chasing down positive review for your business can be daunting.   Here is a quick template that I put together to ask for a positive online review using one or more of the common online review services like Google or Yelp.

Here is the background on why having online reviews of your business is important, not only for credibility but also for search engines optimization. I urge all of my clients with local businesses to use these online review services.

The Internet has come full circle, where once you could find anything you wanted in any part of the world, now the major search engines have placed a specific focus on connecting local businesses to local customers. Google and Yahoo have their maps integration but all of the major search engines are prioritizing local results above some of the most notable national brands.  The challenge now is to rise above the local clutter of businesses in your area and do the things that have been proven to work in enhancing your local business listing.

One of the most critical aspects of local search optimization is having honest reviews of your business from your past and existing clients.  One of the easiest ways to to this is simply to ask. You will never get anything if you don’t ask for it, and when you do here is a quick email template that you can use to help insure that if you gave excellent service that your customer will provide you with an excellent review.

:::

Dear John,

It has been a while since we have spoken but I wanted to reach out to you and ask you a favor I am trying to expand my business and I have chosen to grow my practice by leveraging the Internet, I would like to ask you to positively review my services and the experience that you had with our firm on Google and Yelp/etc.

A typical review takes about 5 minutes to complete, and it mentions when we did business, your opinion of our services and perhaps it mentioned if you would consider referring me to a friend or doing business with us again in the future should the need arise. Online reviews are read by prospective clients and business partners and I am confident that the service that we provided to you would warrant a positive review.

However, if you feel that you would not be able to provide a positive review of your experience please stop what your are doing, and pick up the phone right now and call me at 111-222-3333 or responding to this email right now.  I pride myself on providing excellent customer service and if for any reason you don’t feel that this was evident in your situation please let me know.

You can review my business at:

Link to google business listing
Link to Yelp Listing

Once again it just takes a few minutes, but your positive words can really help me grow my practice.  If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.

Thank you,

Business Owners Name

:::

Pretty straightforward – if you want an online review of your business.  Ask for it. But make sure that you use the term “positive review” so that you have a much higher likelihood of getting a great review.  And if the person is unwilling to give you a positive review hopefully they will give you a call and let you know how you can make it right by them.

Brad Slavin

Local Bank Win Out Over Mega Banks in San Diego

The Background Story – My Quest for a local bank in San Diego

About a year ago I opened an additional business account at Regents Bank in San Diego after checking with the bigger national banks in town.  I spent about two weeks talking to a number of reps at the big box banks and they all had amazing features, online everything, account access anywhere, free this, free that and for a while I was tempted to just move my business to them.  There was a guy at Wells Fargo that had me convinced that joining their institution would be the perfect fit for my business and that if I ever needed anything, a car loan, a business loan, a credit card, a merchant account, heck even a toaster…that Wells would take care of me.

I signed the paperwork and then called Jeffrey Wilber at Regents bank. I have known Jeff for about 5 years now, he sees me when I come into the bank every few weeks and we have had lunch a few times.  I only had one question for him, really I was about to switch banks and I asked him, why I should stay with their small local bank.

His answer, the commitment that Regents Bank has not only to their customers but also to their employees.  The people at the bank had been there a long time, they know the business and more importantly they know their customers. I thought about the glitz and glamour at Wells and I called the rep and asked him how long has been with the bank and what is goals were.  He said about 11 months and he hoped to move to their private banking side, he told me that there would always be someone to take care of my account and not to worry there would be someone to take his place.

I called Jeff, and opened my additional account at Regents Bank and have been really happy ever since.

Fast Forward to 8:23am today. I get a phone call from the Regents Bank Fraud department to tell me that there was suspected fraudulent transactions on the account.  A number of gasoline purchases were made in the past few hours in Iowa.  I said, that the card was in my wallet and that these were not my charges.  He said that he would close the account and I should go to the local Regents Bank office in La Jolla and get a new card.

Bank opened and I was in the door within just a few minutes.  Behind the desk was a woman that I had never met before but I said “I am here because the fraud department called!” and her response was “Oh, you must be Brad from WebHEAT.  Someone else is dealing with this but we all communicate and we were expecting you.”  WOW.  Did you hear that!?  I am not the person responsible, but we all communicate and I will get you taken care of!  I had NEVER met her.  AMAZING.

They handled the issue is just a few minutes.  And I was back to my day.

So to my FRIENDS at Regents Bank, Dan Yates, Jessica, Ryan, Cecilia, Ken, Jeff and the rest of the team that I have never even met. Thank you for operating a real community bank that really cares about each member!