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From: jeremy@cs.swarthmore.edu (Jeremy Brest)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Music On Hold
Message-ID: <13136@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 23:28:12 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 720, Message 3 of 7


In <13121@accuvax.nwu.edu> brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) writes:

>It's sad that a device that was once
>designed to make communication between humans much easier is now being
>engineered to make it much less likely.

>Several of my customers
>remarked how grateful they were that I had SOMEONE (me or the
>answering service) available 24 hours to answer their call, even if
>all they [sic] could do was take a message or promise to page me.

>It was clear to me that the $25 a month for a real person (i.e., an
>answering service) more than paid for itself in the number of jobs I
>got.  Fooey on whizz-bang technology: people want to talk to people,
>not machines.

Brian, if what you want to do is communicate, then having people
grateful is not the right metric to base decision making on. People
leave watered down messages with secretaries and answering services.
Voice mail and answering machines may be displeasing at first, we find
that people leave more detailed messages on them, and for good reason:
The intended recipient hears the message.  It is not translated by
someone who isn't current on the subject. That means that the caller
is able to make assumptions about the listener's knowledge on the
subject.

People take a long time to become comfortable with new modes of
communication. But it is wrong and reactionary to say that voice mail
and answering machines make communications between and among people
less likely -- they make it more likely.  They just make it less likely
that people will need to be on the telephone at the same time to
communicate effectively. (For a pretty decent parallel, look at how
email improves communications in settings where it is well used.)


Jeremy Brest
Jeremy_Brest@NeXT.com