Friday, February 04, 2011

Google Voice: A New Approach to the Suggestion Box

Many student councils utilize suggestion boxes to collect feedback and ideas from the student body. The effectiveness of physical suggestion boxes, often located in libraries or other common areas, can vary greatly. One way to potentially increase the amount and timeliness of feedback collected by a “suggestion box” is to replace the physical box with Google Voice.

Google Voice is a powerful tool that blends phone and texting capabilities with voice transcription and message archiving.  Your student council could set up a Google Account and then set up Google Voice that will give your council its own telephone number. You have a lot of choice with this number so that you could potentially create a number that spells out some word or phrase that is easy to market and remember. Once the student body has the number, they can leave suggestions by calling or texting the number. Google Voice will transcribe the phone calls so that you can scan them quickly and keep a text archive along with text messages. You can collect student’s cell phone numbers via Google Voice and even attempt to provide direct responses to their suggestions while maintaining a level of anonymity.

You will want to check with your school’s administration to make sure they are agreeable with the idea of using Google Voice. Also, you will want to make sure that the Google Account that you use to set up Google Voice is a common account for student council rather than someone’s personal Google account.  For more information on Google Voice check out www.google.com/voice

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