Beware: T-Mobile's Voicemail Paging Trap

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jeremy Bornstein <jeremy () jeremy org>
Date: October 26, 2008 5:19:32 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Beware: T-Mobile's Voicemail Paging Trap

The reason for this is obvious, right?  The more things they get to
say before you can (easily) leave a message, the more airtime they can
charge you for.  The customer-friendly thing to do would be to play
the customer's voicemail greeting immediately, followed by a beep.  Of
course hardly anybody does that now, because that would be a clear
failure to fully monetize customer interactions.

-Jeremy


On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 04:25:49PM -0400, David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> > Date: October 26, 2008 12:47:53 PM EDT
> > To: dave () farber net
> > Cc: lauren () vortex com
> > Subject: Beware: T-Mobile's Voicemail Paging Trap
> >
> >
> >
> >                 Beware: T-Mobile's Voicemail Paging Trap
> >
> >               http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000448.html
> >
> >
> > Greetings.  Longtime users of T-Mobile may already be familiar with
> > this issue that I'm about to describe, but with many persons now
> > moving to T-Mobile from AT&T to get hold of the Google Android G1
> > phone, lots of these new subscribers may be in for a disappointing
> > surprise, especially if you use your phone for business purposes and
> > rely on a clear and concise outgoing voicemail announcement.
> >
> > One of the basic rules of human interface design is that you don't
> > want to ever offer callers options that don't actually work as
> > described.  T-Mobile violates this concept big time for the
> > overwhelming majority of calls into their voicemail system, and in a
> > manner that could have potentially very serious results.
> >
> > The problem is essentially simple.  All callers who hear your
> > personalized voicemail outgoing message are then offered the
> > opportunity to send a numeric page ("press 5").  Unfortunately, this
> > paging prompt is presented to everyone hearing your voicemail
> > message, *even when you have paging turned off* -- which is in
> > fact the default state.
> >
> > This is more than an annoyance to callers who sit through additional
> > verbiage waiting for a beep, it can result in misunderstandings and
> > worse:
> >
> >   "I entered my number for a page -- I needed to reach you right
> >    away!  Why the blazes didn't you call back?"
> >
> >   "Oh, I have paging turned off."
> >
> >   "Then why the hell did the system offer me a page and have me
> >    waste my time entering my call back number?  Who designed that
> >    blasted thing?  The Three Stooges?"
> >
> > Actually, that's unfair to Larry, Moe, and Curly -- I'm sure they
> > could have done a better job of voicemail system design than
> > T-Mobile's vendor.
> >
> > This isn't rocket science.  Don't jerk callers around telling them
> > that they can page and then put them through the motions of entering
> > call back numbers in a useless exercise reminiscent of the Mad Tea
> > Party from "Alice in Wonderland," especially since we can be
> > sure that only a tiny percentage of subscribers ever actually want
> > to use paging at all.
> >
> > It's notable that AT&T Mobility does this right.  You can always
> > configure an AT&T cellular line so that if paging is off, there is
> > no prompting for paging call backs.  In fact, AT&T's cellular
> > voicemail system can be configured just to play your outgoing
> > message and beep without any prompting verbiage at all being added
> > onto the end -- which is the ideal situation in most cases.
> >
> > It's incredible for T-Mobile to operate a voicemail system that
> > makes it impossible for them to avoid confusing callers with false
> > prompting options and actions that are at best ineffectual -- and
> > can easily lead to serious problems indeed when assumed paging
> > actions never actually take place.
> >
> > Achtung T-Mobile!  You pride yourself on your customer service.  But
> > this behavior of your voicemail is sloppy, consumer-unfriendly, and
> > in some situations perhaps even dangerous.  You can do much better.
> >
> > --Lauren--




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