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Trapped in voicemail jail
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September 2, 1996: 12:54 a.m. ET
Few phrases are worse than a machine saying, "Your call is important to us…"
From Correspondent Allan Dodds Frank
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Everyone has a story about being trapped in the never, neverland of voicemail jail. You know the symptoms: a seemingly endless series of key punches in a vain effort to find either the right answer, or at least a human being who can give it to you.
Lucent Technologies -- the AT&T spinoff -- has produced eight million of the 20 million voicemail systems now in use. The company estimates the message business is now a $25 billion industry. But even at Lucent, they admit people prefer to talk to other people.
"If the satisfaction comes from talking to a live person, then you have to make sure they can get to a live person," said Susan Cahill, general manager of Enterprise Messaging.
The frustration of not getting answers inspired the creation of MovieFone, a service that gives movie information and sells tickets to two million people a week.
"It will get better as technology develops," J. Russell Leatherman, president of MovieFone, said. "And for the people who get frustrated, remember, it's a free service. Pick up the phone and call us again, try us again."
But even if voicemail gets better, it's being joined by e-mail, video mail, and other sure-to-be-frustrating forms of electronic messaging. 
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