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Duane D. Stanford reports at Bloomberg that Coca-Cola's Atlanta Headquarters is the latest big campany to ditch its old-style voice mail, which requires users to push buttons to scroll through messages and listen to them one at a time. The change went into effect this month, and a standard outgoing message now throws up an electronic stiff arm, telling callers to try later or use “an alternative method” to contact the person. Techies have predicted the death of voice mail for years as smartphones co-opt much of the office work once performed by telephones and desktop computers. Younger employees who came of age texting while largely ignoring voice mail are bringing that habit into the workforce. “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, In 2012, Vonage reported its year-over-year voicemail volumes dropped 8%. More revealing, the number of people bothering to retrieve those messages plummeted 14%. More and more personal and corporate voicemail boxes now warn callers that their messages are rarely retrieved and that they’re better off sending emails or texts. "The truly productive have effectively abandoned voicemail, preferring to visually track who’s called them on their mobiles," concludes Schrage. "A communications medium that was once essential has become as clunky and irrelevant as Microsoft DOS and carbon paper."
(Score: 3, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday December 24 2014, @05:18AM
We all have that colleague who needs his questions answered immediately and typically uses read receipts when he emails. If he knows you've read the email and you haven't replied within 10 minutes or so, and he will then call or drop by. It's quite annoying, as though we exist simply to answer his questions. But he sees no problem with leaving a voicemail about the topic he's already emailed about, which is even more displeasing. When he emails, it is time for a smoke break.
Voicemail is handy for appointment reminders, but even those are starting to go via text message.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Wednesday December 24 2014, @06:30AM
Why don't you just turn off the sending of read receipts?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday December 24 2014, @06:41AM
Tip: Enforce your priority queue with force.
Ie, ignore all voice and knock-knock pleas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lentilla on Wednesday December 24 2014, @07:00AM
I remember with pride the day when I finally stopped Lotus Notes sending read receipts. I can't remember how my solution worked but I remember it wasn't simple, perhaps made deliberately so by policy.
Prior to that, I'd simply avoid reading emails from those people until they helicoptered over to my desk - whereupon I'd "open" the email (to send the now-superfluous receipt) - and then start complaining how "snowed under" I was and how I'd get to their issue "as soon as possible". Passive/aggressive; I realise; but I have learnt that people hear best when you speak their language: "I'm, like, so busy!" is far more acceptable to your archetypal read-receipt-requester than "Yep, saw it, prioritised it." answer.
Once I'd cracked Lotus' receipt sending mechanism, I then realised I could co-opt it into sending a read receipt every five minutes or so ("oh dear, I have no idea why that is happening!"). I suspect this would be more effective in getting a repeat offender to turn off the read receipt request: it seems apparent that they aren't interested in being polite but sometimes personal inconvenience (in this case a flood of receipts) can assist these people to see the world from eyes other than their own - "assisted empathy", if you will. Of course; being a generally nice guy; I only toyed with the idea, smiled at the implications and then got on with life.
(Score: 5, Funny) by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 24 2014, @01:17PM
I had a user who had read and delete receipts set on all her emails. And she sent A LOT of emails. One day when cleaning out my deleted items, Outlook prompted me for each message to send or not send the delete receipt. I accidentally (I swear) clicked "Yes for All". The user got nearly 1500 delete receipts just from me. The Comptroller did the same thing a few weeks later, and sent her nearly 5000.
I nearly fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard.
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