Over the weekend, one Michael Arrington, (Hello Mike), wrote a post entitled ‘Think before you Voicemail‘.
Mike can be a tad ‘controversial’ sometimes, having an opening gambit like “Voicemail is dead” is bound to ruffle a few feathers… and of course, it did.
As predicted, Sir Mike of Arrington has sparked quite a large and heated debate. At the time of writing, the original article has nearly 200 comments and also has prompted some fantastic responses.
“Think before you Voicemail” is an interesting notion, I say “Think before you SpinVox” is a better one.
Allow me to explain…
Whenever I call anyone with a ‘traditional’ voicemail box (voicemail 1.0 if you will, natch) I certainly think about what I’m going to say - most of the time, if I’m honest, I hang up.
If I continue, normally the first thing out of my mouth is something along the lines of “Dude, first of all: Get SpinVox…” with the second point being something like “…oh, and call me back”.
However, when I encounter a SpinVox enabled voicemail box I *definitely* have a good think. As soon as I hear those wonderful words “SpinVox will convert your voice into text” I KNOW right there and then that the person I’m trying to reach WILL get my message. Therefore a simple “Call me back” becomes redundant - how about leaving a full message with all the facts in? With the confidence of delivery!
A good example of this is a few weeks ago, I stepped off the tube in town and this SpinVox/Voicemail arrived:
I SMS’d Jonathan straight back -”Diary is empty on Thursday, I’ll be there.”
Job done - (that’s me on the right)
I digress…
Voicemail is not dead.
Voicemail is alive.
You just need to know how to use it.
The only thing you should “Think before you Voicemail” is:
“Why doesn’t this guy have SpinVox?!”
____________________
Oh and one final thing: Mike says ‘It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it’.
That’s something we’ve talked about before (over The Future of Voice actually), but dig a little deeper and there are some hard facts out there that back this up:
It is actually SEVEN TIMES quicker to read than to listen.
However it is also seven times quicker to speak than to type, so speaking someone an email for example? That’s a good idea. Oh hang on - they’ve got SpinVox - you already can!
Of the 360 BILLION voicemails (minimum) left every year, a staggering 20% of them go unlistened to. Combine that with the fact that your average voicemail can lose 50% of its value after a mere 45mins, the case for SpinVox becomes increasingly valuable.
So a message to Mike, from all of us at SpinVox: Voicemail has evolved. Come join the party.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Tellingly, you SMS’d him back.
There are times when you want to leave a voicemail, not speak to a person. For example, giving someone some piece of persistent information, telling your boss you’re off sick, etc.
Some operators allow you to dial a Voicemail number to go straight to the mailbox - but it’s not standardised. Perhaps, in the glorious future, dialing #+447….. will go straight to voicemail and we can speak and read little messages with impunity
T