One of the other features availiable with Google Voice is the ability to create different voicemail messages for different groups of contacts and completely different messages for strangers who call. This was very useful recently when I was interviewing I had set my default voicemail to be a formal message so that it sounds professional for when I am contacted by an employer, and yet when my friends or family call they still hear my normal, short “Hey it Ben leave a message.”
You will first want to set up Google Voice as your primary voicemail which I have previously discussed.
Assuming all of your contacts are already in Google Contacts, which is very simple to do with an Android phone or a Blackberry using Google Sync, they just have to be placed into groups. By going to the Google Contacts page either through Gmail or GV, you need to assign all of the contacts to specific groups (eg. friends, family, etc.). You will be able to specify one voicemail message for each group, so divide them up accordingly.
Now we just need to modify some GV settings. Go to voice.google.com and go to Settings > Voice Settings on the top right. On the ‘Voicemail & Text’ tab you want to record some greetings (at least one for the public and one for your grouped contacts, but you can choose to record as many as you want). On this drop down list, set the default voicemail greeting, that is what non-contacts (strangers) will hear when they call you.
On the ‘Groups’ tab you can ‘Edit’ each group and choose which voicemail message those group members will hear.
