Interesting article last week on voice mail and how it is steadily falling out of favor — and use — by all those young whipper-snappers out there.
Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication. Data from uReach Technologies, which operates the voice messaging systems of Verizon Wireless and other cellphone carriers, shows that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer and that more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them, said Saul Einbinder, senior vice president for marketing and business development for uReach, in an e-mail message.
I’ll note that the problem here may be folks who are, um, uncomfortable with the technology, don’t know how to check their voice mail, or aren’t in the habit of doing so. That’s as much a generational problem in the other direction.
By contrast, 91 percent of people under 30 respond to text messages within an hour, and they are four times more likely to respond to texts than to voice messages within minutes, according to a 2008 study for Sprint conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation. Even adults 30 and older are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text than to a voice message, the study found.
There are no definitive studies of how many voice mail messages American leave compared with earlier periods, but if the technology is heading toward obsolescence — as many communication experts suspect — the trend is being driven by young people. Again and again, people under 25 recount returning calls from older colleagues and family members without bothering to listen to messages first. Thanks to cellphone technology, they can see who called and hit the Send button to reply without calling their voice mail box. “Didn’t you get my message?” parents ask. “No,” their children reply, “but I saw that you called.”
I’ve been known to do that, esp. when I think the message just says, “Hey, call me at ….” Which, in turn, discourages folks from leaving detailed messages and instead just leaving messages saying, “Hey, call me at ….”
Jack Cathey, 20, a college student in Lewisburg, Tenn., said his parents and grandparents continued trying to leave him voice messages despite his objections. “Do you know your voice mail’s full?” a family member asked him recently, failing to comprehend that, for his generation, that might not be a problem.
This is pretty interesting stuff, both in private life and professional.
- People may expect that a message is being heard when it isn’t. It’s tough playing telephone tag when one person doesn’t feel the touch (which some might consider a benefit, not a drawback).
- Voice is much slower and serial to listen to than text is to read and reread. It is also transitory — unlike IM logs, voice messages vanish quickly.
- Voice is much easier to use (albeit with delays for long greetings in voice mail), especially for folks with mobility or dexterity problems (who may not easily text on cell phones or even use a keyboard).
The complication is uncertainty of how to best reach (or be reached) by different people. Some colleagues always call my cell. Others IM me first. Still others try email; if it’s urgent, it goes to the cell. At home, most people use the land line, many catch me on email or GChat, but a few text my cell directly first. (So far, nobody is relying on direct messages in Twitter. Yet.)
Then there are boundaries. I have my (company) mobile number in my office voice mail for people to call “if it’s urgent.” I could add my email address, or even an IM addy — but not only does that mean that folks are going to be listening to a greeting longer, I’m not sure that I want most of the folks who call me to also be emailing me.
Yet many see the shift away from voice mail as part of a generational divide, in which younger people are substituting text for talk, while older folks yammer on. Text messaging has increased more than tenfold over the last three years, according to CTIA — the Wireless Association, the trade group representing the industry. Young people have overwhelmingly been the most enthusiastic adopters. According to Nielsen Mobile, users 13 to 17 now send or receive an average of 1,742 text messages a month, versus 231 cellphone calls, and they spend nearly the same amount of time on their phones texting as talking.
And, as a techie, I’m in an odd netherworld, much preferring text to voice communication, but still used to using voice with a lot of people.
For Charlie Park, 30, a Web developer in Williamsburg, Va., a text message is more efficient and — equally important — more respectful of the recipient’s time. “You never send an e-mail that says, ‘Hey, e-mail me back!’ You’re always sending information,” he said.
Will this settle out in a few years? Or is this an area where we’re going to have ongoing disruptions in communication as technology and fads have people trying in too many different ways to communicate? Are services going to start bridging some of these things, where people will have a single way to reach you, and you can (dynamically) determine how best to be contacted?
Interesting times ahead.
I’m very unlikely to hear voicemail at my job. I much prefer email in that context. But at home, a message on my answering machine is fine, and no worse than email (in some situations, better). I almost never use texting in either context. The difference is the ease of use.
Voicemail at my job does not show me when there is a message waiting as my answering machine does. To check voicemail at my job requires that I call a special phone number, enter a pin, and navigate a set of voicemail menus. To check my answering machine, I push a button.
While this may all be influenced by generational differences, I think a big part of it is that learning to use voicemail is a pain in the butt.
An integrated messaging system seems the way to go — vmail providing some sort of status text/email (or, in Margie’s rather quaint case, page), etc., preferably with caller ID or some other sort of identifying code. (I hate going, “Oh, crap, I missed a call, hope it wasn’t the boss” only to find out it was a cold call from a vendor.)
I think the key is to have some kind of notification that voicemail is waiting. Visual voicemail or integrated messaging would work, but the simpler technology of a flashing light indicating a waiting message would work too. However, in cases where offices and phones are frequently shared (for example in my department and since I am an adjunct) it wouldn’t be good to have voicemail tied too tightly to a given phone. Thus, the phones have no indicator light that tells you when voicemail is waiting, and no button to push to get your voicemail. I understand the reason why it is this way, but it makes voicemail much less user-friendly, and since I tend to follow the path of least resistance on things that are of low importance to me, I simply instruct my students to contact me via email rather than by phone. All this is complicated by the fact that I spend most of my working time outside my office, either lecturing or working from home (and I don’t give my home number to my students after having received student phone calls at midnight or later).
Reflecting on my avoidance of voicemail suggests to me that the different patterns of voicemail usage are not an issue of fashion, as the generational difference might suggest. I think it’s an issue of convenience, functionality, and context, and for young people who aren’t primarily office workers, voicemail just doesn’t work for them.