How many of you have your voicemail setup so people can leave messages? I have mine set to a 'disabled' message so anyone that calls and misses me is encouraged to SMS or email me - which is much easier for me to check than listening to an audio message.
Do any of you use voicemail-to-text services so you can read voicemails?
If you are someone who conducts a lot of business over the phone, voicemail is a must. If someone "important" is trying to call you / get hold of you and you are unavailable, your default goal should be to "reduce friction" for the other person to get the message to you! ("important" usually means they are really busy and they value their time a lot, and you should too.... Clients, Board, Investors, Counsel, Accountant, your managers, doctor, etc... ). Having voicemail disabled and requiring people to text you or email you after having tried to call you (which usually means it's time sensitive / important-ish) is adding more friction/resistance in the communications line. It also comes off as very unprofessional. What if you don't have their number saved on your phone or they call from an unknown number and you don't know who the miss call is from...adds a lot of lag in the communication pipeline.
Voicemail also allows you to take your time in getting back to someone if you don't want to / can't have a conversation right away, but you want to know what they might want to talk about. You can then prepare for the topic and call back.
My iPhone does a decent job at converting voicemail-to-text (at&t visual voicemail). I can quickly scroll through my voicemails, delete stuff from marketers/advertisements and call back important ones after reading/listening to the message. Voicemail has definitely help me prepare for important call-back more than a few times (especially while dealing with general counsel).
I would never disable my voicemail or let my inbox get full (voicemail inboxes filling up might be a "thing of the past" very soon!)
Switched it off soon after again. Reason is mainly that 99.9% of the voicemails left were work related (I only keep one phone# for everything) ahem, "lazy bullshit". It seems most (middle) management is constantly leaving messages about non-issues, for me to deal with. Texting is a miniscule additional "hurdle" which filters this out for me.
I had several discussions proving my point.
[Bill Lumbergh]"Yeah, could you please enable your voice mail?"
[Me]"Well, if it is important you can text me, I'll get right back to you"
[Bill]"but that is less convenient.."
[Me]"I guess if there is something important, it would warrant the effort to send a three word SMS message.. 'please call me'"
[Bill]"Eh.."Also, if I want someone to reply to me quickly, I'm not going to put extra hurdles in their way to make it more difficult for them to do so.
On the other hand, if I'm calling a friend's cell phone and they don't answer, I usually leave a text message instead of a voice mail since it's easier for them to deal with.
At some point I'll get a new phone number and retire this one and when I do that, I'll probably A. be more guarded about sharing the number, and B. care more about voicemail. Maybe.
I don't think it's that useful anymore in the era of WhatsApp voice messages.