Today a story broke about Coca Cola, one of the largest companies in the world, and was all about why they are turning off voicemail in their Atlanta HQ. It made me think back to a call to my cellular company many years ago where I asked them to turn off my voice mail, and to take the cost of it off of my bill.
They couldn't. And they still can't. My point was I was using GrandCentral and I didn't need their Voicemail so I shouldn't be paying for a service I don't use or need.
But today, the point goes deeper, and is pretty much in line with the Bloomberg story. Not everyone really needs to be using voice mail. And to my point, if I'm not using the service, why should I pay for it.
For starters, almost all the people I deal with professionally are either able to reach me or provide answers to questions via some other messaging service, app, text or email, and most of them have been able to for more years than I care to remember.
Second, leaving me a long voice mail usually will only lead to a follow up. I'm not sure how many times a supplier's customer service team will leave a voicemail, but when they’re called back, you don't get the same person to speak to, and that in turn leads to a whole other issue. Lack of ownership of the problem and often the need to start all over again.
While I'm sure some in business still believe that voicemail is a solution, but for some businesspeople it's really more like voicejail.
Want to solve voice mail hell? Here are a few tips on how to do that:
1. Leave an outbound message saying "Hi, thanks for calling. I don't listen to voicemail, reach me another way."
2.Use the call forwarding/busy, no answer code function for your carrier and forward it to a number that you set up somewhere with a third party provider, without voice mail. The call will just ring, and ring, and ring. That means instead of leaving you a message they have to call back.
3. Let your voice mailbox fill up, and never erase any messages.
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