Unified Messaging is Great, but Why Can't It Do More?

Long before my arrival at Telco Depot, I was frustrated with voicemail systems. Especially when you have 20 or so new messages. And you know that only one or two of those are actually important.

But still, you have to listen to all of them. And of course the one voicemail you want to hear is at the end of the list. You listen to the auto attendant's voice (why is it always a woman's voice?) drone on about the date and time and the caller's information; finally you get to the message and push Delete. Over .. and over again.

Over the course of a life, that can add up to a lot of wasted time. Unnecessary wasted time--that really irks me.

But unified messaging brings those voicemails straight to your email. It's actually a very cool feature. And it is a helpful solution.

The business phone system I have at work is an Allworx phone. I have to say the Allworx is the first system where I saw voicemail to email capabilities in play. But it's available as a feature on most modern systems.

Skipping over unimportant missed calls is as easy as deleting junk mail. And ah...not a single auto attendant word had to be spoken.

Yesterday, for instance, 5 minutes after I left work my blackberry starts vibrating. I open it up to see a new email. And the subject line includes "Outside Caller" and the caller's phone number. And you know what? I didn't recognize the number and therefore assumed it's probably another SEO company trying to sale its services. So I clicked Delete. How satisfying.

Now, what am I going to do with all that free time?

However...I believe there is still much to improve upon. And thus are my complaints.

Even though I delete the voicemail email, I still have to go to my office phone the next day and delete it again on my voicemail box. Which means auto attendant not avoided.

My theoretical solution: Have a link in the email, that once clicked, removes the voicemail from my box. Voila!

Second grievance: When I receive a call at the office, my phone displays the caller id. Fancy right? Well, why can't that information be included in the email? Or could it even look up my personal address book and display even more detailed info. Then it'd really be easy to sort through the muck.

That's all. A short grumble for a feature that I find quite valuable.