Now, coworkers answer the phone when one is away from his desk. Sometimes it is very good. The problem is that many people were using it as their only source of communications. Van Doren says he believes companies decided voice mail could replace secretaries and telephone operators. That got them into trouble.
Human contact is an important element of telephone communications.
Rather than do that, let voice mail take up the time-consuming task of writing down messages and delivering them. But have a live person as gateway into the voice mail system. Van Doren's advice is to figure out who should use it and who shouldn't. It may be better to have an operator answer the phone, then channel the call into an individual's voice mail so a message can be recorded. You can change how the system is perceived by callers.