Ringless voicemail is a technology that allows leaving a voice message on a cell phone without actually making a call. The technology is able to accomplish this by completely bypassing the wireless cellular network.
Instead, it contacts a voicemail server of a cellular provider directly by using a business landline. After that, the server places the message in a customer’s allocated voice mail server space and sends the customer a notification that the customer has a new voicemail message.
Why Advocates Are Speaking For It?
Advocates of ringless voicemail messaging point out that the technology is very different from cold-calling and underline the differences. Here’s what the main differences are:
1. Ringless Voicemail Messaging Doesn’t Interrupt The Consumer
One of the biggest problems with cold calling is that it interrupts the customers. A person may be at work or spending time with the family. Cold-calling is intrusive and interruptive. It forces a person to switch attention from what he or she is occupied with and spend time talking to a person that they may have no interest in talking to.
Ringless voicemail doesn’t have any of these negatives. A ringless voicemail message goes directly to the voice mailbox and the consumer only sees it when he or she decides to check the messages. Because of this, there’s no interruption and people do not get annoyed as easily as they do when they receive cold calls.
2. It Has A Lower Complaint Rate Compared To Other Marketing Methods
Since people do not get annoyed, they don’t complain. For this reason, ringless voicemail messaging has a very little complaint rate. The advocates of the technology use this fact in the argument that because there aren’t a lot of complaints, the technology should be allowed. They often compare ringless voicemail messaging to unsolicited direct mail.
There are always people that are not happy with a technology or some method of marketing. There are people who don’t like receiving direct mail, but most people are fine with it. The direct mail industry generates a lot of revenue and creates a lot of jobs. The government chooses to allow it to exist, which is why it should allow ringless voicemail messaging, too.
3. Customers Never Have To Pay For A Call
Another argument against cold calling and against fax broadcasting is that these methods of marketing bear costs to consumers. With cold calling, consumers may have to pay for an incoming call. With broadcast fax, consumers may be paying for an incoming fax and for the costs of the ink a fax machine uses to print a page.
Ringless voicemail completely bypasses wireless cellular networks and consumers bear no costs whatsoever, just like they don’t when they receive direct mail.
4. The Rate Of Callbacks Is Typically Very High
A marketing ringless voicemail message often ends with an offer to initiate a callback and take advantage of the offer. This is how many businesses measure the success of their ringless voicemail campaigns. They track how many callbacks they get. They may also be tracking how many people visit a website or stop by a physical location of a business after receiving a call.
Ringless voicemail advocates point out that the response rates from ringless voicemail marketing are very high compared to other marketing methods. This, they conclude, means that ringless voicemail effectively connects consumers with products and services that they find relevant. According to the advocates of the ringless voicemail, it proves that the technology does more good than bad.
Why Advocates Are Speaking Against It?
Advocates that speak against ringless voicemail marketing typically mention of the following three factors: interruptions and waste of time and money.
1. Ringless Voicemail Is Annoying
Unites States Senator Chuck Schumer is one of the supporters of legislation against ringless voicemail. He first announced his legislation in 2016.
The legislation wasn’t actually aimed at ringless voicemail marketing. Its goal was to stop all robocalls, which are all calls that use a computerized system for delivery. The act that Schumer introduced proposed that all consumers get access to robocall blocking technology. It also suggested requiring communication providers to label and block calls that use fraudulent caller ID.
According to Schumer, the fact that most Americans have signed up for the Do Not Call List means that they do not want to be receiving any unwanted messages on their phones, including voicemail messages.
2. Ringless Voicemail Has Potential To Flood Voicemail With Marketing Messages
Despite the fact that federal “Do Not Call” rules prohibit cold calling, spam calls, and robocalls are still happening on a large scale. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were over 5 million complaints about unwanted calls in 2016. Schumer has also pointed that in 2016 residents of two New York zip codes have received over 50 million robocalls in just one month.
Legislators think that ringless voicemail has the same risks and if the number of voicemails increases, customers will be getting progressively more annoyed. For this reason, some legislators believe that the legislation about the “Do Not Call” List and unwanted phone calls needs to be revised.
When talking about new versions of the legislature, they include ringless voicemail in their proposals under the umbrella of “automated calling.” They do not distinguish between calls that go through the wireless carrier networks and calls that go directly to voicemail.
3. When Ringless Voicemail Involves Scammers Consumers May Incur Financial Losses
One of the issues with fraudulent caller ID and robocalls is that the technology is very popular among scammers who are trying to steal money from consumers. Criminals figured out how to have the caller ID to display phone numbers that belong to the government, credit card companies and banks. Then, they leave messages trying to extort money from the consumers under false pretenses.
Again, advocates that are speaking against ringless voicemail are afraid that scammers will start using the technology on a massive scale to defraud consumers. The data from the Consumers Union shows that fraudulent robocalls cost consumers $350 million annually.
[Image credit: Flickr – Neda Andel, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0),]
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.
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