Sat
Jul
5
A defense of voicemail
Everyone’s been bashing voicemail lately, and more and more I hear “please e-mail me” in voicemail messages. A friend’s voicemail used to say “leave a voicemail if you’re my mom”.
There are indeed plenty of good reasons to hate voicemail as there are any communications system. VM is hard to skim and it’s long been abused by many long talkers, low talkers and high talkers — and Mikey. However, there are a few good things about it:
- Voicemail is very reliable. Nearly 100% of VMs gets though, while my Postini spam filter has about 5 false positives a week. SMS text messages also fail occasionally and don’t even bounce back when they don’t work.
- Many people still consider it impolite or confusing if you call and don’t leave a voicemail.
- If you want a call back, there seems no more polite and fast way to get it than leaving a voicemail just saying “call me back”. It’s awkward and almost impolite to e-mail and write “call me”. Instead, people are getting into the habit of scheduling every call at a specific time by e-mail — which usually takes about 5 or 6 e-mail back and forth suggesting and confirming times.
- As the voicemail bashers point out, people are getting fewer voicemails. Yours will standout.
- You can inject some enthusiasm and wit into your message using your voice, which is a lot more powerful than smilies.
That said I use e-mail 99% of the time, but every now and then a voicemail is the best way to communicate. I’m going to keep leaving them. If anything, I’ll start leaving more as e-mail boxes become more crowded and VMs turn to rare audible gems in people’s text driven lives.
