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.
