"Please leave your message after the tone" It was one of the phrases most heard by those who left messages in the mailbox. This happened when you called 30 years ago by local phones, but you did not get a response from your interlocutor, activating the answering machine.
Originally, the answering machine was the forerunner of voicemail services, considered one of the most used innovations of the XNUMXth century. The use of this platform was widely used among landline and mobile phone users.
Even today, small and large companies around the world resort to a voice mail mode, to comfortably communicate with their customers. Voicemail essentially works the same as an answering machine.
However, while answering machine messages are saved and accessed locally, voicemail messages are stored in a remote location and you can open them wherever you want.
With the advent of mobile phones, text messages gained popularity over voice mail. In fact, voicemail has evolved into versions that we can see in Google Voice messages. These messages are compatible with the current generation of the Internet.
But to better understand the current reality of voice mail, let's learn a little about the origins of this tool that was used to send emergency messages and keep billions of people connected worldwide.
Who invented voicemail?
The voicemail system was created in the 1970s by Gordon Matthews (nicknamed the voicemail father), an entrepreneur and inventor who also founded Voice Mail Express (VMX), then the world's first manufacturer of voicemail systems.
Matthews applied for his first patent in 1979 and sold his first VMX voicemail system to 3M the following year. This system allowed people to leave a message without the phone ringing.
The first voice mailboxes were as big as refrigerators. It was in 1992, that these devices were reduced to the size of filing cabinets. Of course, answering machines were around before the VMX voicemail system, so let's go back a bit.
In 1898, Valdemar Poulsen invented a device called a telegraphphone, which was equipped with a magnetic recorder. The magnetic recording technique of Poulsen's invention would lead to the development of the answering machine.
In 1935, the Swiss inventor Willy Müller created the first answering machine. This invention had portability problems due to its height of one meter and complex structure. In later years, the answering machine model developed by Müller underwent several changes.
In 1949, Joseph Zimmerman and George W. Danner devised the Electronic Secretary, the first commercially successful answering machine. Another well-known answering machine was Phonetel's Ansafone, designed by the Japanese Kazuo Hashimoto., released to the US market in 1960.
By the XNUMXs, answering machines were becoming smaller and more affordable for home use, so they quickly gained popularity in American homes.
The newly invented voice mail systems were too expensive for anyone except large companies to buy them. In the early 1980s, twenty hours of storage cost $180.000, but this figure dropped to $13.000 in 1992.
When did voicemail really get popular?
Voicemail systems revolutionized the field of digital recording. It was a device that offered great sound quality and more features than the old answering machines. However, their high cost meant that few could buy them.
Then came electronic voice processing cards, first developed in 1982 by technology manufacturer Dialogic Corporation.
These new cards allowed programmers to install voicemail programs on desktop computers. This technology made voice mail systems much cheaper, sweeping the communications sector in a short time.
Apart from big companies, voice mail was already beginning to be used in small businesses and homes. It was an easy-to-use, secure and multifunctional recording system that offered great convenience to callers.
Voicemail completely replaced traditional answering machines in the late 1990s and became the new digital response system of the early XNUMXst century.
But what about the voicemail system today, which means that few people use it today? The reasons for this to happen is due to the presence of new messaging options.
Why do people use less voicemail?
It's a reality: Voicemail usage is declining. The fact that this tool is ineffective, that cultural norms have evolved and that new technologies are more appropriate to do this job, are premises behind this situation.
Voice mail is a less efficient information medium than text. It requires your full attention, and listening to someone stumble in a voicemail takes longer than read the equivalent text.
And it is that in itself the voice mail was an uncomfortable tool, but you did not know it. If you received a voicemail on your mobile, you had to call a service number and enter a password that you frequently forgot. Because you were just getting sporadic voicemails.
For whom SMS and WhatsApp are their main methods of communication, voice mail is an unnecessary waste. However, is the future just text? Not necessarily.
Unified messaging and visual voicemail
When we analyze how technologies change the way we communicate, we immediately understand that the message is not the medium. And it is that the content of a message and the channel used to transmit it are increasingly dissociated.
Visual voicemail and unified messaging are clear examples of this. For example, if you subscribe to Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging, voice messages will arrive in your inbox in MP3 format and transcribed into text.
Millennials' preference for communicating by text places obligations on both the person sending the voice message and the person receiving it.
Sometimes it can be more difficult to type a message than to record a voice message. Automatic transcription eases the burden on both parties.
The impact on communication with users is twofold
Users increasingly expect companies to communicate with them on their own terms. A conversation that starts in one medium can change to another several times throughout its life, which is evidence of omnichannel.
What at first glance appears to be a decline in voicemail usage is actually a change in the way consumers view communication. This goes hand in hand with a growing preference for self-service.
Voice mail at customer service centers or the possibility for customers to request a call back at a time when there is less activity are nothing more than trinkets in relation to what lies ahead in the future.
Self-service care and AIs
If the purpose of voicemail (and before that, pagers) was to provide an asynchronous option for telephone communication, then it fits right into the self-service story.
People who leave a voicemail at a business don't want to leave a voicemail. They want something done immediately. Therefore, The death of voicemail is really the evolution of voicemail into self-service.
In 2017, Forrester Research cited self-service and automated conversations as a priority in customer service operations. Online banking, for example, has taught people that they can help themselves quickly, accurately and conveniently.
So the answer to what comes after voicemail is “AI in the call center”. Just as automated voicemail replaced pagers, automated agents will allow customers to do things beyond whether human agents are available.
Voicemail isn't dead, it's just different
Voicemail is not dead. But its decline points to a change in the way customers expect to interact with service providers. It is a change driven by technological advances which, in turn, have influenced the culture of communication.
So when you read that voicemail is dead, think about what that means for the means you use today to communicate with your friends and family and in the way in which AIs will change customer service centers, in the medium or long term.