It seems I’m not alone in loathing voicemail. For many of the same reasons listed in a techie blog article excerpted below:
But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.
Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.
How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”
When I started thinking about it, I realized that I live almost exclusively in email. And more times than not, I don’t listen to voice mail right away, preferring to call people back off the missed call list or sometimes knowing that eventually they will either call back, email or something. But even email is overwhelming. Despite sorting and prioritizing, it takes a long time to respond to it. Despite all the claims of great productivity gains through technology tools, I wonder if it’s really better.
From a business standpoint, I find voicemail very frustrating. Very seldom these days, do I get a real person on the other end of a phone call. Even calls into major corporations are answered with voice mail that directs you to dial the extension you want or punch in the name of the person you are calling. Even when someone is sitting at their desk, they let the call go into voice mail and may or may not call back in a timely manner. Instead of being cost effective and efficient, voice mail is actually taking up more time and costing employers more money with additional calls and lost productivity. I may be from the old school, but I feel voice mail and e-mail have made doing business very impersonal.
My favorite is “Hi, it’s me!” Me who?! Yes, there’s caller id, but it’s so juvenile – “Hi it’s ME”.
I just may turn my answering machine off.
Thanks, “ME”! (Oh, you made me think of something very interesting!)
I don’t have my voicemail configured for the same reason.
“…And more times than not, I don’t listen to voice mail right away, preferring to call people back off the missed call list or sometimes knowing that eventually they will either call back, email or something…”
Ah. That explains it.
A sign of an unhappy workplace is when coworkers email each other instead of talking or phoning. Filtering human interaction through voice mail and email is safer — you don’t actually have to respond to another person. Maybe texting is the new two-way…we’ll see. Columbia, though, is offerring younger business people remedial courses in basic, one on one communication skills. Businesses are finding that the interpersonal skills among recent graduates and MBAs is abysmal.