Once upon a time, back when people had to manipulate a rotating plastic dial in order to dial a phone number, and the outside world was littered with telephones set up in glass booths that sometimes doubled as public restrooms, there was no way of leaving a message for someone who didn’t answer the phone. Sure, sometimes you were lucky enough to reach a random roommate or family member who happened to have a pen and notepad handy, but otherwise you were out of luck.
Pictured: Ancient telephone artifacts from the pre-Internet era. They also served as convenient changing rooms for superheroes.
Then came the answering machine, which not only enabled callers to leave a message, but also gave creative and/or crazy people an outlet for making up bizarre messages and recording them, either as the recorded greeting, or the message left. But as entertaining as this was, even this method had its limitations.
Finally, there came voicemail, which delivered all of the benefits of the answering machine while adding greater functionality and flexibility. And just when you think we’ve reached the pinnacle of “I’m not here, leave a message” technology, along comes the text voice mail option!
Visual Voicemail
Visual voicemail is a feature that uses voice recognition technology to transcribe a verbal voicemail message into actual text. This technology makes it easy for users to keep better track of messages and to easily access and read them. It should come as no surprise, then, that visual voicemail saves your company money by saving your employees valuable time, by making sure they don’t miss important messages.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the advantages.
I See What You’re Saying …
Ever hear anyone use that phrase? When you think about it, it sounds wrong, doesn’t it? It should be, “I hear what you’re saying”, or “I see what you mean”. Unless of course, you’re talking about visual voicemail.
According to the article, Six Ways Visual Voicemail Can Save Your Company Time And Money, people read faster than they can listen to a voicemail. If you have someone who’s a fast reader, they can take one glance at the entire message and snag the gist of it, without sitting there listening to someone droning on with “Um … this is Jim … from … Jim Incorporated … uh … I … uh … “, while you’re silently screaming “Get on with it!”
There’s also the element of convenience. Usually, when you check your voicemail, you have to go through an entire batch of messages in order to find one particular caller, letting each message play for at least a few seconds. This means you end up wading through telemarketers, wrong numbers, or your kids asking you to pick up soda, when what you really want is to find that one important message from a client. The messages are there for you to find in your email or text box, easy as pie.
Let’s not forget the flexibility that visual voicemail brings you. These days, you probably have a notebook, a smart phone, possibly even a tablet, in addition to a desktop system. Visual voicemail can be accessed via any of those devices.
Finally, if you’re waxing nostalgic for the good old days of hearing someone tripping over their words while leaving you a message, visual voicemail entries include the corresponding sound file.
Of Course, There’s More
Check out the aforementioned link for a more comprehensive list of advantages of visual voicemail. But whether it’s for business or personal use, visual voicemail brings a new dimension of convenience as well savings to today’s communications, especially when used in conjunction with a VoIP system.
Photo Credit: Nick Kenrick
