Should I get rid of voicemail?
Should I just whack it?
I’ve had a couple of reports today that my voicemail isn’t working right. Two callers wrote to me and said that they just got a fast busy signal.
I asked some folks to call me to test voicemail, and for them, it worked. “Go figure.” I’ll call the phone company, in my copious spare time, and submit a trouble report.
Alternatively, I could just get rid of voicemail. I really don’t like it. I’d much rather get e-mail.
That reminds me of an interesting story that came out last month in the New York Times, “You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?“
What do you think?
Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
The idea that as an executive and journalist you can even seriously consider walking away from messages left on the phone…. How times have changed.
I have a friend with one of those transcription services (forgot which one) that turns VM into an e-mail to his blackberry. They get it into e-mail within 2-3 minutes of when it’s left.
Unless you have some really “interesting” personal messages coming in to your work voicemail that you don’t want your wife, girlfriend (or both! 🙂 to find out about, that might be a great way to enable people to reach you the way they feel most comfortable, but then you can respond via the technology that you think is best…
Get Phonetag.com. It’s (relatively) expensive, but you can point all your phones at it and receive all your vmails as transcribed emails. The transcription works remarkably well, in my experience.