Fixing voicemail, three simple ideas
Woodgrain mobile phones now plz k thx bai.
For the last few months, I’ve been getting vibed out by a lot of people for my outgoing voicemail message. In the offending recording, I warn callers that I may not be able to call them back for two or three days and gently suggest they send a text message or email. This isn’t because I am an evangelist for lexical communication or due to a strange aversion to spoken conversation. Rather, I find voicemail increasingly inefficient and difficult to integrate with my daily life due to endless classes, meetings, and a campus with spotty cell coverage.
Apparently, I am not alone…
“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.” — Michael Arrington, “Think Before You Voicemail”, 5 July 2008.
With respect to my spurned friends, I present a few ideas for improving voicemail. (Props to @campo for brainstorming with me last weekend.)
-1. Make voicemail competitive
What if I could start a competing voicemail service and have it integrate with my phone service / handset as easily as the bundled VM that comes with my contract? Perhaps make my own little VoIP PBX based on Asterisk and run it off my home server? This one sounds simple but I have no idea what market and tech forces are in involved.
0. Give everyone random-access voicemail
My handset should associate voicemails with particular callers and allow me to listen to my voicemails in any order I wish. This trivial idea was patented in 1989 and later appeared as “unified messaging” in some corporate PIM packages but didn’t make the jump to mobile, for reasons unknown. The iPhone’s “visual voicemail” implements something similar by downloading messages as compressed digital audio and playing them back locally. Surely this isn’t the optimal solution for today’s tech. It requires much more local storage space than is available on the typical handset. Why isn’t this implemented on the server side? Couldn’t the voicemail system respond to a tone sent automatically by my handset?
1. Simplify voicemail-to-text options
There are several voicemail transcription services in the marketplace that convert spoken messages into SMS or email. Unfortunately, the cost is prohibitive for most users and the presumed privacy of voicemail is compromised. A simple alternative would be to provide callers with a handful of common messages so that before they reach a voice mailbox, they can opt to send a canned text message such as “call me asap” or “I’m going to be late”. Service providers could suggest a few messages but permit users to key in their own. Of course, the VUI (”Press 1 for…”) would also have to be customizable to avoid subjecting callers to Silicon Sally’s anger/anxiety-inducing drone. This would help to reduce discrimination against callers who do not use SMS.
2. Make out-going messages work like Away or Status messages
Presence is a critical component to living on the network. From the Twitter feed to the Facebook status to the Gmail tag line, various away messages communicate availability to friends and colleagues. The out-going voicemail message seems a natural fit with these other indicators of presence and yet it requires a quiet place and at least 5 consecutive free minutes to update one’s out-going voice message. Lolwut?
The ubiquitous ansaphone.
Imagine the utility of a flexible out-going voice message system. It would be a one-touch button on the handset and users could retain a log of past messages (”Offline for the weekend”, “Yes, Mom, I’m getting enough sleep”) to retrieve in a jam.
Voicemail is dead. Long live Voicemail.
Of course, I am spending this time trying to repair voicemail because, despite its present flaws, I love voicemail. Voicemail can be an empowering tool for people without regular access to a telephone and it offers an intimacy that even the best t9-scribes struggle to locate in 140 characters. My heart warms when I unexpectedly hear the voice of an old friend and even the most hardcore netizens must admit that some news is just too joyful (or depressing) to deliver via text. No emoticon can match the expressive potential of someone’s voice.
Tags: messaging, mobile, sms, social, tech, text, voice, voicemail
July 28th, 2008 at 13:34:52 (PDT -04:00)
in regards to competitive voicemail services, there are already a few that will grab your messages and email them to you/let you stream them on the web. quick google search returned http://www.gotvoice.com/ and i’m sure there are others!
July 28th, 2008 at 13:39:12 (PDT -04:00)
but that’s a hack. i want it integrated with my handset. wahhhh
July 28th, 2008 at 15:05:08 (PDT -04:00)
I have a substantively similar voice mail recording.
July 28th, 2008 at 22:42:23 (PDT -04:00)
thank you for writing this up. i can use it to explain to my parents and friends why i wish they’d find me on IM, text, or email instead. btw, not exactly woodgrain (and would require the dreaded iPhone) but suck this: http://www.popgadget.net/2008/07/miniot_iwood_fo.php
July 29th, 2008 at 10:56:47 (PDT -04:00)
siemens make a limited edition woodgrain phone in 2005. it had full qwerty and a blackberry client!
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/13382.php
the marketing copy is UNREAL:
“The backs of these exclusive mobile phone models are decorated with burl wood from the thuya tree, which grows in the wild. No phone is like the other. Not just heat, drought and fire, but also animal bite-marks create an individual grain and give the wood of this conifer its unique character. The ethereal oils in thuya wood also lend a pleasant, natural fragrance to the SK65 Burlwood.”
August 3rd, 2008 at 04:43:21 (PDT -04:00)
Sounds like a good basis for a startup!
I have a message at my cc voicemail and on all my cellphones and basically says, I don’t use this: email me!
In china, there is no such thing as voicemail, rather, if you stay on line, your message is transcribed and texted to you…much more efficient…actually, service is more efficient overall than usa…beleed dat!
June 22nd, 2009 at 16:10:07 (PDT -04:00)
I have to say that your blog is pretty cool. If you could add a few more videos I would really appreciate it!