Why I chose Voxer as the voice messaging app to use with my clients

Hello, I’m Laura from Worditude, and I have an intentionally comfy business that makes the money I need while squishing in around my other life priorities, responsibilities, challenges and adventures.

This is the Ask Laura podcast. where, in 10 minutes or less, I answer your questions, using my 15 + years of experience in copywriting, marketing, and making money online.

Today’s question was asked by Kate Lynch author of the Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents Substack:

“I know you’re a Voxer fan, but I noticed when I wanted to save a voice message from you that I would need the paid plan for that. When I’ve used Signal and WhatsApp, I didn’t have that issue.

I want to offer asynchronous parent coaching, and it doesn’t much matter to me what app I use.

What are the pros and cons of Voxer, WhatsApp, Signal, etc?

What suggestions do you have?

What pitfalls should I look out for?

What am I forgetting to ask about this idea?”

What’s Voxer

• I use Voxer to communicate with my clients instead of video chat.

• It’s like a one-way comms like a walkie talkie, but you can also do texts and it records the messages so you can go back and listen to them. You do not have to say ‘Roger that’ at the end of each message.

• I chose Voxer two years ago.

  I can’t remember what options were available at the time, but I doubt I was choosing from the same selection, and I don’t remember considering at the time. I think I probably was aware that Telegram existed.

  Because I’m not familiar with the other apps, I can’t do a comparison, but I can share what was important to me, and help you decide if it matters to you.

   

  Things I love about Voxer (and are really important to me)

   

  • I can’t interrupt them while they’re speaking. I can leave a text message and they’ll see it real-time. Or I can start a voice-message at the same time as they are speaking…. but I am not talking over the top of them. This is being captured as a separate communication that they can listen to when they are done speaking there message to me. This is HUGE for me because I am a natural interupter, which can stop clients getting the really important thoughts or juicy bits of info out of their head when I am on a Zoom call, and at the same time I try to hold back which is draining for me. And I’m way less likely to interupt because instead of just blurting out what’s in my head, I have to press the button to talk….. which I don’t – instead I write in a notebook. And come back to it when I send the next message.
  • Delay with WhatsApp or dms. It with Voxer When the client speaks I can hear them real-time, just like a telephone call and vice versa. So I dn’t have that agnoisng wait while I wonder if they hate me.
  • If I miss what they say – it’s recorded so I can go back to it – and I can play it at double-time so I don’t need to keep them waiting
  • We can switch between voice and text
    • Sometimes that’s what my brain wants to do for clarity of communication
    • Sometimes that works great if we’re workshopping one sentence or naming a thing (I love to work on names for things)
    • Sometimes that suits the client better, especially if they’re in an environment where they’re happy to listen on headphones but don’t want to speak to me out loud, or sometimes they like to start typing out responses while listening to my voice message (and vice versa)
  • They can use it for free – but need to upgrade to pro to keep messages more than 30 days and download messages – at the time of recording, I think that’s $3.99

Things that I wish were better

Glitchyness

It’s definitely been better over the last 6 months

Sometimes can’t scroll back through messages on desktop or phone – which is annoying if I’m trying to retrieve a question, or a link. Clising browser and logging in again, or reinstallong the app

Sometimes messages just stop part way through

Sometimes I start speaking as soon as hit the button but the app doesn’t start recording immediately so the first second or two is lost – the meaning of the message is still clear, but it probably feels a bit abrupt to the client.

⚠️ Sometimes the voice message sounds garbled: Whenever I’ve had garbled voice messages come through that I can’t hear properly, it’s because the client either needs to update their Voxer app, or more commonly, they have a Bluetooth devices somewhere nearby and it’s interfering with their connection of their phone mic to the app. It is not fun to have to go back to a client after they left you a 5-6 minute message that you can’t play back and say – sorry I can’t hear that can you try again.

Things that don’t bother me but may be a problem for you

Images – terrible

Videos – not possible – I record all my videos in Vimeo and share a link anyway – and I like that there’s no video option as it manages the expectation – I won’t be going on camera.

Other things you might want to consider

• If any of the apps are already reasonably well established with your audience
• Do you know many people who are using it, so you’ve got people to ask questions – your friends don’t want to be helping you out for free all the time, but it is very helpful to be able to post on Facebook – hey I’m having this problem with Voxer, anyone know how to fix it
• Will you need to save lots of messages
• How tech-savvy are your clients. What’s the learning curve like for them

Ok, that’s about as much of I could think of to consider, when choosing whether to use Voxer, or something else with your clients.

I’ve got a blog post at https://worditude.co.uk/blog/voxer-coaching-explained/

And Passholder’s can access a presentation I recorded for a Summit last year, about why I ditched Zoom, and how I built offers around Voxer instead.

You’ve been listening to Ask Laura.

You can send me your questions by going to worditude.co.uk/ask-laura

Thanks for listening, Goodbye

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