2. Voice mail

Voice mail is a very useful feature of modern telephone systems whereby a person can leave an audio message for the recipient to listen to at a later stage.

The old-fashioned method of recording a message was to use an audio cassette recorder attached to the handset. The machine would answer the call after a certain number of rings, play back a message to the caller advising them that the call is being recorded. After the recording it would then drop the line, ready for the next call.

Modern voice mail is a digital service where the message is stored within the telephone system. For instance many companies have internal telephone systems offering voice mail to each office worker with each worker having their own internal number.

Mobile phone operators also offer voice mail as a service. You simply dial the voice mail number to listen to the message.

Voice mail services include

• The user (owner) can record a number of different messages for various circumstances. For example:
  • Internal call from within the company
  • External call from outside the company
  • Being on holiday or on a business trip
• The owner uses the voice mail menu system to select the kind of message they want people to hear. The internal \ external calls are detected automatically by the system and deliver the correct statement to the caller.
• Can store many messages
• Can delete multiple messages (or all of them in one go)
• Can delete the oldest messages automatically
• Can forward the message to another voice mail account
• User can listen to the messages from anywhere by calling their own number and entering a PIN number
• More sophisticated voice mail system have voice-to-text capability. It can then send the resulting text as an email or as an attachment