TechCrunch founder/Editor, Michael Arrington has a piece on voice mail which is very much on the money.
It's on the money because he's presenting a viewpoint based on real world experiences. I'm pretty much in the same boat, though I don't get nearly the number of calls that he does from people who don't matter to me as much.
These days, those closest too me know that the best way to reach me is:
1) Schedule the call in advance
2) Call me during off peak hours, I may actually answer the phone
3) Instant message me and then turn the chat into a voice or video call
4) Send an email
5) SMS me
The last one is one of the only weaknesses of former client GrandCentral that Arrington referenced. Post Google acquisition they never got around to implementing SMS passthrough, something that would have made the best even better.
As someone who is on either a Nokia Smartphone (the new E71 rocks and the E90 is a workhorse for me in Europe) or a Blackberry all the time these days, I'm finding that IM on a Smartphone (Blackberry Messenger is how my Doctor wife I and tend to communicate during the day) is ideal, and even the aggregation IM tools prove valuable too. Instead of voice mail tag, the Instant Messaging (IM) or SMS basically gets me to the point of talking, not playing tag.
Bottom line-Voice mail is at a point in my life where it's one of lowest means of communications that matters.
I run my business on my cell phone. Voicemail destroys that illusion and sounds really unprofessional. Found this company at RingAlice.com that kills your voicemail, replacing it with a person who takes your unanswered calls. Really revolutionary, has that personal human touch, and sounds very sophisticated for $30.
Posted by: Rygelski.wordpress.com | April 27, 2010 at 08:04 AM
Voicemail is the last resort when all options (call forwarding/find me/followme) has failed.
Posted by: Account Deleted | April 06, 2010 at 07:56 PM
I don't know about others but I'm a nine to fiver and if people cannot reach me during normal working hours then they usually leave me a voicemail.
I am also contacted through email and rarely IM, but that is limited to the people who have my direct email address (and skype name).
This leaves customers the option of calling our company and dialing extensions. If I am not there, i get a voicemail.
Of course.. I'm notified that I have a voicemail by my email...
I don't think that voicemail is dead or dying. It's just another old communication tool that has taken a back seat to more current ones
Posted by: Voiceway | July 17, 2008 at 11:33 AM
Matt,
The point I made was how voicemail has become the last effective way to reach ME.
We now live in an era of personalization. Michael Arrington, who needs no one to defend him, is saying the same thing.
Back in the day of Voice mail coming to market a friend was one of the first people SELLING systems into Fortune 500 companies. Up until then everyone had a secretary, a receptionist. Heck even I had one of each. They took messages. What they also did was prioritize my calls, find me when someone they knew I needed to talk with or vice versa. Heck they would even get up from their desk and find me down the hall, in the back of the arena or up front in another office.
Voicemail today doesn't do that. Sure we have find me, follow me, but at the end of the day voice mail has become a "round to it" type of feature that needs to be made smarter and more relevant.
Yes, being in a position to have other methods of being reached beyond voice mail is a great place to be.
You're never waiting for the phone to ring.
Posted by: Andy Abramson | July 13, 2008 at 02:46 AM
'Presence' relies on people using the same tools, interconnected. They won't for a long time.
Trouble handling voicemail means you're not using unified messaging.
Voicemail can move the conversation forward just as email can, only more emotively.
Inconvenience for the recipient shouldn't take precedence over convenience for the caller. Which is the contentious point I suppose.
Arrington is arringant enough not to care about the people calling - and I guess you're saying you can do without the calls too. Nice work if you can get it.
Posted by: matt lambert | July 11, 2008 at 03:44 PM
Are there any available statistics on voice mail use? It would be interesting to see the 2nd order trends here, I suspect the growth of voicemail is slowing as SMS continues to gain acceptance across all age groups in the USA.
Arrington's comments on the speech-to-text services are worth paying attention to. Voice is a great input tech but a lousy display tech for the very intrusive nature of listening to voice mail.
Even people of an age who don't send SMS messages like receiving them from relatives and friends, that's a clear indication of what is happening here.
The next level IMHO will be some sort of intelligent agents to arbitrate the timing and scheduling of conversations between people.
Posted by: bikingbill | July 06, 2008 at 11:34 AM
"It's on the money because he's presenting a viewpoint based on real world experiences."
You and Arrignton could not be more out of touch with the real world if you deliberately tried to.
The quoted statement you make above is the exact reason Arrington is NOT on the money. His examples reflect HIS cloistered world. They are anecdotal at best. Get back to me with facts.
Posted by: MWD | July 05, 2008 at 10:33 PM