Ninety-Eight Percent of Users Want a Better Way to Get Voicemail

Results from a recent study of voicemail users released today indicates an overwhelming number of participants, more than 98 percent, expressed a desire for a better way to receive their voice messages. uReach Technologies, a supplier of carrier messaging platforms, partnered with Yap, a provider of scalable, fully automated voicemail-to-text services, to conduct the study.  

The study explored ways to alleviate one of the key difficulties people have with traditional voicemail: It is tedious to retrieve and listen to messages. Participants were able to use a variety of delivery methods and formats, including Yap's automated voicemail transcriptions. Key findings from the study are summarized below:

• 98 percent of users expressed a desire for a better way to access their voice messages.
• 87 percent of users indicated that automated transcriptions are a useful addition to their voicemail service.
• 94 percent want to receive their messages directly via email, text or multimedia message.
• 11 percent would welcome getting their voice messages through Facebook, Twitter or Instant Messenger.

"It's really simple: People want to get their voicemail just as easily as they get a text, an email or an IM," said Saul Einbinder, senior vice president of marketing and business development at uReach, "and Yap and uReach demonstrated a cost-effective way to do just that."

uReach Technologies integrated communications for the test subjects so they could use their actual day-to-day mobile and business phones, testing with real messages from their own live callers.  

"The study validates something we've seen empirically. Once you receive voicemails in the form of text, you don't want to go back to retrieving them and often writing down the details," said Igor Jablokov, CEO at Yap. "Voicemails become a real-time communications tool once they are quickly converted to text. The study shows how customers value the difference."

Previous studies have used a predetermined set of messages read by a panel of speakers. More than 300 people participated in the six-week study. Each voicemail message received was transcribed to text in real-time by Yap's fully automated voicemail-to-text service, and voicemails were delivered according to each participant's preference.

Consumers can trial and subscribe to the same services that the study participants used at www.ureach.com.