When a customer recently told me that he’d tried to leave a voicemail message for me but got a message saying my voicemail box was full, I was surprised. Like I’ve written in the past, usage of voicemail is quite low in India: I receive fewer voicemails per year in India than in a day when I was working in Germany and the UK. When I accessed my voicemail box, sure enough, I found only eight messages left for me over the last ten months – none of which I’d checked since I’d never received any alert when these messages were left. How a mere eight messages can exhaust a whole voicemail box is beyond me.
Recording a voicemail message is free for the caller. Despite that, it suffers from a low offtake, perhaps illustrating that you can build – and give it away free – but they might still not come sometimes. At the same time, voicemail is not free for the subscriber, some of whom enrol for it despite the cost (equivalent of $1-1.75 per month depending upon the provider) – possibly because they realized its value when they’ve used it abroad.
Whether this small minority continues to use voicemail or gives it up depends upon how mobile network operators (MNOs) address the problems in their voicemail services.
MNOs seeking to push up their ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User, which is estimated to be in the range of $5-8 per month in India) https://miso.moe/ativan-2mg-online/ could use voicemail as a lucrative Value Added Service (VAS). The following features would help them to solidify the value proposition of their voicemail services and attract more adopters:
- Send realtime alerts to subscribers as soon as someone leaves them a voicemail. While this is a standard feature in many networks abroad, it rarely works in India, if my personal experience is anything to go by
- Notify subscriber promptly when their voicemail box is full or, better still, when it’s nearing full. Subscribers would have the chance to clear old messages and make room for new ones
- The voicemail introduction message (“message from so-and-so-number on so-and-so date and so-and-so-time”) should identify the caller by name if their number is present in the phonebook of the subscriber’s handset. This is a very useful feature and, although I admit that I’ve never come across it anywhere, I can’t resist asking for it. After all, MNOs in India are sitting on top of one of the hottest mobile phone markets in the world and can surely afford to take the lead in innovating and launching new features in India ahead of anywhere else in the world.
On the other hand, if MNOs neglect their voicemail services and continue with their present shoddy administration, they risk cancelation by their present users, with the resultant loss of revenues being not so inconsequential considering that voicemail subscription fees are almost 20% of ARPU.