Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says voice mail is dead and he wants it to go away, right now. The post and comments are laced with typical tech-media overstatement, straw men and sweeping generalizations, and he falls victim to the belief, common in the tech world, that everybody's just like him, right down to the person answering the phone in a law office or mom-and-pop retail store.
Obviously, lots of people still use voice mail. I keep getting lectured on the importance of the Message-Waiting light on telephones, so somebody must be paying attention to the messages that the light is lit for. Law firms are a great example. I can't imagine lawyers not using voice mail anytime in the near future.
Still, Arrington is not completely off base. No doubt, people use voice mail a lot less than they used to, and a lot less than they use the combination of all other messaging formats like email, IM and unified messaging.
For enterprises, this comes at a crucial time: Your legacy voice mail system is probably near (or beyond) end of life. So how do you approach the upgrade of your voice messaging capability?
I actually think the issues Arrington raises play well into the concepts that most vendors in the voice/messaging space are discussing. Most of the UC packages--whether from the IP-PBX vendors, the software vendors (i.e., Microsoft & IBM), or applications companies like AVST (see their most recent product release)--combine messaging with other communications capabilities and interfaces. They don't try to get you to buy voice mail in isolation, but as part of a package of communications capabilities. Which is where the world is headed anyway. Arrington's right that voice mail isn't the productivity tool it was 15 years ago--it's now one of many such tools in the communications system.
When it comes to voice messaging, what Unified Communications should be trying to do is not to pre-empt or eliminate the need for voice mail, but fold voice mail into the mix more seamlessly--reducing the number of voice mail boxes that users have to check; making it easier to receive and reply to voice mail from wherever the user happens to be when he or she receives it; ensuring that voice mail storage meets compliance rules. That's what all the vendors are talking about.
If you don't like voice mail, you don't have to use it. As Arrington's piece demonstrates, you can become a well known blogger while ignoring your voice mail. That works for some jobs. It doesn't work for others. Voice mail ain't dead.
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