Coca Cola says life is better without voicemail [telecom]

Of all the inventions of the Twentieth century, I have often thought that the answering machine was the worst.

It is only after a thirty-plus year trial that Coca-Cola and other companies are realizing that voice mail is a colossal waste of time: an invitation to strangers to impose unwanted obligations, unproductive suggestions, selfish demands, and foolish expectations on someone else's employees, at someone else's expense.

Home users, in like manner, have grown weary of the self-imposed obligation to allow salesmen, relatives, neighborhood busybodies, and plain-old losers to siphon away their time without their consent.

It used to be that ordinary people had the option of managing their own telephone usage - with tricks as common as placing a phone inside the oven to gain some peace and quiet. Then, along with CLASS features and blue-box protection, the ESS delivered the "convenience" of being able to find out exactly who was calling us when we weren't willing to be bothered, and of accepting the quid-pro-quo that we knew they expected us to return the marker.

The phone companies loved it, and priced it accordingly: busy hour completion rates went from less than forty percent to over eighty in less than fifteen years. Not only did the phone company rake in Billions by charging for a service which saved them money, they also managed to alter common people's perception of what is normal and appropriate, like Coca-Cola's prophetic Christmas marketing campaign, which changed Santa Claus' seasonal suit from brown leather to sugar-sweet-buy-it-now-bright-red.

I am no exception: having accepted Google's free long-distance, I'm obligated to endure email messages which contain recordings of whomever has decided that their time is more important than mine. The most common message I receive is a repeat of the shopworn "Tag, you're it" that we all learned to think was funny when the Tall White Guy [tm] on the TV told us it was going to make our lives smell lemony fresh.

It smells, to be sure, but not of lemmons: voice mail is, instead, a sickly-sour-note in the stench of our oh-so-modern home lives; a reminder that we are not in charge of our own time or our own destiny, and that such antedeluvian luxuries as "quiet enjoyment" are now reserved for the rich.

How, I wonder, did the Tall White Guy [tm] slip that one by us?

Bill

Copyright (C) 2014 E.W. Horne. All Rights Reserved.

Email is much worse than voice mail due to the ability to provide unlimited details and instructions.

You could also say the same about faxes and real mail, depending on how far back in history you want to go.

Bottom line, time management is an important skill.

To me, personally, it's still a convenience. Just like a Roku box: it lets me time shift a conversation to when I'm ready to take part in it -- as well as have the right to decide *whether* I'm going to take part in it. True, marketers' call-completion ratios go up ... but it's not my time they're wasting by getting me to answer their calls -- the TAD answers for me, and effectively shelters me.

And with the OGM I've used over the past 48 years, that includes "*No* collect or third party calls, please," I've cut my incidence of collect and fraudulent 3rd party billings from a monthly $5 or more (the original motivation to acquire an answering machine in the first place) to zero.

YMMV, of course. Cheers, -- tlvp

And the ability to say "no", in the correct manner for the context, is an absolutely crucial part of that skill set.

People will ask you anything. Once you've mastered the skill of saying "no," your life becomes yours. Otherwise, you've given your life to others to run for you.

Just because someone sends you a voicemail, or one of those emails with unlimited details and instructions, that doesn't obligate you to do their bidding 100%. Do what's right for the business, for your business. Manage your time and your business. That others can't do that for themselves, and end up trying to send you detailed emails and voicemails to make up for their shortcomings, is their problem.

I must respectfully disagree.

To me, the answering machine (or voice mail) is merely a tool. It can be used well or used poorly. To communicate, sometimes I'll go face to face, [with] an email, a telephone call, a fax, a letter, and sometimes a message left directly to voice mail. It all depends on the urgency, [the] context of the message, and formality. (I still use postal mail for social correspondence as that seems to be the polite thing to do.)

Indeed, in the 1960s, as telephone service grew more sophisticated and excutives found themselves almost always reachable, there were many writings proclaiming the telephone to be the worst invention of the

20th century. People wanted to get away from the incessant jangling ring of the telephone.

As to answering machines in the home, many years ago most people lived with their families and someone was often around to answer the phone and take a message. But in modern times, we have far more people living alone. The answering machine helps them stay in touch. With a cell phone, there are situations where the phone must be turned off, so the voice mail takes care of those situations.

In terms of time consumption, I find that the answering machine saves time by filtering out soliciting and robo calls. During election season, I let the answering machine take all calls since I'm flooded with recorded calls from politicians seeking a vote.

As to voice mail in business, before getting it we would miss calls; there wasn't always secretarial support to take messages, especially for junior staff. Voice mail allows for checking messages remotely, which is helpful. If I'm working on something critical, I simply unplug my phone and let voice mail take the calls.

Yes, voice mail isn't perfect: I get messages where the caller leaves me their life story before getting to the point, or callers who speak at 500 words per minute and I can't understand what they said. But all in all I'd say it's a net gain.