Voicemail as an application has been mostly passive. I would like to see it becoming an intelligent agent analyzing a customer’s usage patterns, for instance.
For instance, when I call someone and he does not answer, I get anxious as to why the call is not being answered. There are Presence integrated functions that I can implement e.g. you get the message that the person is in a meeting or in some do-not-disturb mode etc. But that is not enough. What if my next door senior citizen neighbor has been lying dead for days and I am thinking the old man is becoming arrogant. If I hear something like ‘…This phone has not been answered for the last 8 days …’ I would want to probe further rather than just ignore it.
Information like that can really help a lot. There would obviously be some consent involved on part of the subscriber as to who he lets access to such information. And perhaps some interaction is required between Test/Monitoring solution and this intelligent voicemail agent in order to compile intelligent information. However the prospects of turning voicemail into an intelligent agent are interesting. This agent could potentially tell you how long the phone has been faulty or dead if so; when was the last time subscriber answered the phone; when was the last time he made an outgoing call; how many calls have remained unanswered over the last x days; what is the average quality score (mos) on his phone line; these days his average call duration is 1 minute (i.e. he is in a bad mood these days); the average number of rings before he picks up the phone etc etc. So all that good stuff for a stalker :)
There is another simple thing voicemail should incorporate. How many times do you get a call you cannot answer just that instant, but would like to call the person back shortly? There should be a key function for this since this is a generally required feature. So when I receive your call, I will press a key and you get my welcome message “Hi, how are you. Thanks for calling. I am in the middle of something, but I will call you back shortly.”
Yet another simple thing I would like my voicemail to do: There should be caller-specific welcome messages. There must already be stuff like that out there. So if my parents call, play welcome message X; if my friends call play welcome message Y.