“People north of 40 are schizophrenic about voice mail,” says Michael Schrage. “People under 35 scarcely ever use it.” Companies are increasingly combining telephone, e-mail, text and video systems into unified Internet-based systems that eliminate overlap. “Many people in many corporations simply don’t have the time or desire to spend 25 minutes plowing through a stack of 15 to 25 voice mails at the end or beginning of the day,” says Schrage.
Please don’t leave me a voicemail. Email me. Hell, even text me. But if I even remember to check the voicemail, chances are I will accidentally (uh, yeah, accidentally – that’s it) delete it, or just forget about it.
Voicemail is dead and should stay buried. It’s inconvenient, time-consuming, unreliable and can’t easily be filed in any useful information silo.
Stay in the grave, voicemail. Just stay.