Think you get a lot of calls? Try putting your phone number outside of a house for sale in Austin.

"Realtors tend to get a lot of calls, and they miss a lot of calls," said Lyle Pratt, founder of Better Voicemail.

That's why his service is targeting real estate agents as their initial user group. Better Voicemail, based in Austin - where Real Estate has stayed relatively hot - transcribes and organizes your messages. But unlike other services like Google Voice that offer similar services, Better Voicemail also allows users to set up options using their touch tone dial. Potential buyers can even schedule showings with the agent through the service, and it can rank voicemails in order of priority.

"It's annoying when you're sitting in front of a house and want to know about it, but the Realtor isn't picking up,"  Pratt said.

Let's say you see a house and want to know if it's two or three bedrooms. Instead of waiting for the Realtor to get back to you, you'd just need to press 2 to hear about the property. Does it fit your needs? Great, leave a message. If not then simply move on.

Pratt said they are targeting Real Estate agents because it's an under served market.

"I think we have a pretty good niche in the Real Estate market," he said. "If we made more of a general use product it'd be a competitor (to bigger services such as Google Voice)."

Better Voicemail might expand to other professions after using Real Estate as their use case, but for now Pratt said they just want Realtors (hey, journalists get a lot of phone calls too!).

Better Voicemail is about to be submitted to the iOS App Store and Android Market, and people who want in on the Beta can sign up at the service's website.
 
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