The impending death of voice mail

At the tone, leave a message.....When was the last time you logged into your voice mail box and checked the messages in it? Increasingly, more and more consumers rarely check their voice mail. Consumer don't have the time, it seems, to hear long voice mail messages, they would rather respond to people or friends who called instantly.  Also, it is not easy to search voice mail messages on your phone. Nobody has the patience to go through it one by one!

Here's an interesting statistic from an article that I had read:

More than 30 percent of voice mail messages remain unheard for three days or longer, according to uReach Technologies, which designs voice messaging systems for Verizon and other phone companies. And more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes rarely check them, said Saul Einbinder, the firm’s senior vice president for marketing and business development. A survey done for Sprint by Opinion Research Corporation found that with the exception of people age 65 and over, adults respond more quickly to a text message than to a voice message. Those under the age of 30 are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message than to a voice mail.

If you are a brand having a call center for customer service, how often do you make it easy for consumers to send text messages with their queries, if there is a huge waiting time on the call, so that you get  your service reps to either call these customers back immediately or  quickly respond back with a text message? I have rarely seen companies do so.

Remember, text message box has taken over  the voice mail box!

Comments

[Intel09]

I'm certainly guilty of not checking my voice mail. Saving money is always at the forefront of our minds, but what about the loss of quality we sometimes experience as a result of this. For example, there is no point changing from one telephone network provider to another for the sake of cheaper rates, if you are likely to be charged a massive transfer fee, from the originating company. When we searched for our 0222 numbers provider in the UK, this was made clearer to us.

Intelesis