Quit wasting your time with voice mail!

I was reading this article that was saying that fewer and fewer people have time for voice mail.  Interesting, huh?  Do you remember the days of answering machines?  Some people still have them, don’t they?  Well, with the move to cell phones, people have become accustomed to voice mail instead.  Now, people don’t even like voice mail?

I know that my family has elected to cut voice mail out of the picture unless absolutely necessary.  With caller ID, we know you called and we’ll return the call.  What’s the point to a voice mail saying, “Hey, this is Tim, call me back!”  If you call me and leave me a message, I will not shoot you.  You may be good to call back a bit later also, in case I don’t get the message right away.

Warning, another plug for Google Voice is coming!

Google Voice may be working to change the voice mail problem.  If someone calls my Google Voice number, and you leave a message, I will promptly get an email telling me so.  In that email, I will have a transcription of the message (not perfect yet but getting there) and a link to listen to the actual message.

There are several advantages here to typical voice mail.  For one, I get an email so I am instantly notified (a reminder in the email is nice).  On the cell, messages may be there for days before I even realize there is a message!  Yay for email!  Secondly, the transcription saves me from having to listen to the message if I am someplace where I can’t.  Thirdly, when I DO listen to the message, I can skip around to retrieve key information.  Oh, and I can do other nifty things like download the message to my hard drive and email it to someone else.  Very cool, huh?

In essence, Google Voice lets you have better control over your voice mail possibly making the whole process easier!