How the death of voice mail is changing the way we connect
Don’t wait for the beep: Voice mail is going the way of the dinosaurs.
Although phone-message technology advanced steadily from cassette recorders attached to land lines to services offered by phone companies to cloud-based message storage for mobile devices, it’s now running up against a changing American society that places increasing value on saving every possible moment of time.
With the prevalence of mobile phones, texting, chat apps and email, voice mail just isn’t as what it used to be.
“Let’s say I get a phone call from my brother,” said Nora Lara, a 50-year-old employee at Santa Clara County Superior Court, who is no fan of voice mail and prefers texting to talking on the phone. “I’ll ignore it. And then he’ll text me. When people leave me voice messages, I just delete them without even checking. If they want to get hold of me, they can text me.”
Roman Basinschi, a 26-year-old software engineer, never uses voice mail. “I don’t think it’s even set up,” he said. Occasionally he’ll leave a voice mail — but only for older people and only in more formal situations.
Lara and Basinchi illustrate a profound and widespread change, one that is re-shaping personal and professional communications and creating a whole new set of rules for how to connect. Voice mail is now seen viewed as inefficient. And for many, that feeling extends to phone conversations in general. These days, a phone call often requires advance scheduling.
The frantic pace of life and work is pushing out phone-based voice communication in favour of text, chat, email and other options seen as more efficient, said Mary Jane Copps, a Canadabased phone-communication consultant known as “The Phone Lady” who gives workshops and consultations across North America.
“We’re all feeling more and more overwhelmed,” Copps said. “We all have less time.”
Businesses began adapting in the past few years to the trend away from voice mail, according to Naomi Baron, an American University linguist who studies language and technology.
In 2014, Coca-Cola scrapped voice mail for employees in a move designed to increase productivity. JPMorgan Chase followed suit in 2015, stripping the service from its consumer-bank workers.
Baron said her own university two years ago stopped automatically providing employees with voice mail, and made it an opt-in service.
If you’re looking to point a finger at those responsible for the looming demise of voice mail, Millennials are an appropriate target, experts said. That’s because they cut their communications teeth on text messaging and emailing, Baron said.
“This is a large generalization, but they don’t feel that comfortable in face-to-face spoken interaction or its derivative over the phone,” Baron said. “They haven’t had the practice. You have far greater control when you can type something out ... and then read it again before you send it, and then edit if you choose to.”
Copps sees people under 40 or so as the leaders in the movement against voice mail. Leaving messages for them is usually a waste of time, she said. “They’ve stopped listening to voice mail, so if your phone number shows up on their phone and they recognize your number they’ll call you back, but they won’t listen to your message,” Copps said.
Varun Bhansali, a digital marketer from San Jose, uses text messaging or apps for most communications. But he admits spoken conversation still matters in important relationships.