In early August, David Pogue in the New York Times began a campaign, Take Back the Beep, to have phone companies cut back or eliminate many of the instructions that are played when leaving or listening to your voicemail. Specifically he raises the point that consumers don’t want or need to hear all the instructions abut how to leave a message, listen to their messages, reply, etc.
He’s probably right. When voicemail was introduced decades ago, detailed instructions were necessary but now everyone is familiar and this detail is unnecessary. Mr. Pogue has gone a little overboard here, though, as he implies this as some sinister plot by the phones companies to squeeze a few extra seconds of billing time out of their customers. With the proliferation of plans with high number of minutes, it’s hard to imagine a 5-10 seconds of instructions are driving someone over their planned minutes.
The real issue here is that while the user behavior for telephony has changed a lot over the last decade, some of the underlying services have not. Voicemail, for example, was designed initially with fixed line services in mind. As mobile became more prevalent, we tacked on features to existing voicemail solutions versus creating a solution that was designed with mobile in mind. That has finally begun to change.
For example the market has taken to visual voicemail solutions for mobile phones. While there are a number of different versions, both client-based and clientless, the fundamental experience is the same. You can view a list of all your voicemail messages directly on you handset and simply select the message you want to listen to. There is no greeting or password or other delay. You simply listen to the one message you want to listen to.
There are also simpler versions of voicemail being deployed today that take into account that the subscriber is most likely a mobile consumer. Instead of a. bunch of fixed line options (e.g., transfer to an operator, try another extension, page the individual, etc.) the caller is given the option to simply send a predefined text to ask the person to call them. Of course they can still leave a voicemail too.
So while I appreciate Mr. Pogue’s attempt to influence carriers to update the voicemail experience, I think he is only addressing a problem instead of truly improving a consumer experience. We (both carriers and the vendors who support them) need to be continuing monitoring consumer behavior to insure we are delivering solutions that best match current needs. The new solutions for voice messaging that are coming to market are a step in this direction.