Conversationware

Sometimes, leaving a voicemail is more useful than speaking to someone in real time.

Of course it’s not black and white, it depends on the conversation.

But, to illustrate the point, haven’t you ever got someone on the phone, asked a question and then waited while you hear them um and ah, or scrabble about for some piece of paper.

How often does the person give up and say - “I’ll have to call you back”?

We’re taught very early on about the power of preparation. So, when you make a call, plan for the person not being there. And, if you are in the habit of leaving ‘good’ messages, quite often you’ll get more done than if you actually do get hold of someone.

Voicemail is panned because of the people leaving useless messages. It gets a raw deal.

Leaving a well structured voicemail outlining your objectives and timelines can be a boon to your own productivity rather than a halted progress.

Whats more, if the person needs help with the task you’ve just set, they can ask for help with those objectives by forwarding the message in YOUR words (and emotions), rather than their interpretation.

So, when someone leaves a message saying “Matt, call me back”, it’s very tempting not to.

Exposing a combined desk and telephone presence is like giving out your front door keys.

So, are your parents and best friends welcome around at ANY time?

The likelihood is that even if they have keys, the visit would still be agreed in advance. Either that, or perhaps you’d have a standing arrangement for a certain day of the week.

Work is a bit like that standing arrangement, a pact between colleagues to be available

But does your availability pact extend to everyone in your business, to any more people than you’re sharing projects with at that time, your immediate teams?

Does your being available ’depend’?

Because answering ’depends’ could mean you need to ‘manage’ your presence, and imagine setting presence when putting the kettle on.

So, even if someone is shown to be at their desk and not on the phone, they might not answer your phonecall…..it depends on

• What they’re doing,
• Who YOU are
• What you want to talk about.

Arranging conversations in advance 

My current experience is that even with presence tools, because they don’t automatically answer the above questions, we’re more often arranging conversations in advance.

there is an invitation…..then permission…for you to talk to them at a time, about something.

Most people email an invitation - but this is unrelated to real time communications and there has to be a better way than that. 

Even a ringing phone is an invitation, but ok, it’s basic, and the trouble with a voice invitation is that by the time you’ve asked, you’re already speaking to them. As an aside, having one dimensional presence tools does lend more weight to voicemail, which is probably the best invite to speak - if you use voicemail properly that is.

Presence on it’s own won’t replace voicemail

But back to the main point. Isn’t sending invitations much simpler than managing presence? I think it could be.

Would you turn up to your customer’s office without arranging it in advance?

And so, therefore, is presence the wrong tool for anything other than close relationships, which already have an element of assumed permission?

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Some other people’s posts on presence

Collaboration Loop (again) article on presence interoperability

Melanie argues that this is the holy grail for UC, but as you can guess from the title of this post, I’m not ‘holy’ convinced (groan)

Yes, the customer is king, and I would definitely love to see callcentre skillsets aggregated and shown online so that I could click to talk at my own convenience, but other work relationships are more complicated than that.

Alec of Iotum was the first to make me think about availability instead of just presence.

My understanding is that availability is ’presence’ with an overlay, which means that the questions - “Am I at my desk, am I on the phone”…should be supplemented with;

“do I want to talk to you” (right now) 

- Availability does need that vital permission component -

But that’s my own interpretation and words

Dan York argues that presence is critical, but doesn’t necessarily relate it to a telephone call, as he sees voice calls declining in importance.

I very much agree that voice is less useful than it used to be - but for some additional reasons, it deserves a future post.

Presence will be critical, but only once this permission requirement is worked out, and it needs something new, a better way to initiate and manage a conversation. It should definitely be conditional.

The trouble with using bad software is, it can make you feel like an idiot.

For me, BAD software is something that

• a. ‘could’ ‘logically’ transform a task, but somehow manages to elude our using it to the fullest extent.
• b. takes longer to achieve the task than the way we’re doing it already

Whatever the software, the improvement has to be outstandingly obvious for people to adopt it.

Not knowing what is good for us then, is just a symptom of being human.

At this point, it would be easy to score some cheap points about ‘user unfriendly’ and frustrating software ruining a perfectly good product idea - sadly we’ve all used bad software, so that’s not the focus.

And, for the record, I don’t buy into the refrain that bad software workers are just blaming their tools. More often, they blame themselves.

On the flip side then, what makes good software good?

I contend that Good software makes you feel like a genius.

Without any training courses you just know how it works….and how good is THAT, being able to use software without any training.

It doesn’t take long for the feelings about how good the software is, to blend very neatly into feelings about how clever you are.

Of course, it’s only fair to share the good fortune and show other people how much of a genius they could be too. When this happens, the results can be impressive (ipod sales). Good design has a momentum all of its own.

Intuitive software is like that.

The WAY it gets to be intuitive is to think ahead, to know what the user wants to do, before they themselves know they want to do it, as well as just being tons better than the old way.

Intuition itself is based on past experiences, it’s why traffic light colours have spread into many other facets of life.

Intution then, is what you already know, applied to the new.

So, to Unified Communications.

Software has proven itself useful - a given I hope - and thus (communication) applications are being presented and are multiplying at an incredible rate.

Even websites are now interactive, and thus a brand new interface for every site and every service.

Unified Communications is completely, utterly, about the reduction of user interfaces. Nothing to do with a single box or supplier for every application.

This is in a world where the amount of software that users are being presented with is leading to their shoulders sagging under the load.

A good example of this user interface ‘reversal’ is with voicemail.

A user’s past experience of a machine that answers a phone, was an answering machine. And THAT is exactly how people used it, ignoring the 90% of functionality that was available past the first keypress, because their intuition didn’t tell them anything different.

People trust their intuition more than they do other people, and so training courses were of little value in improving the situation, a comparitively weak alternative to an intuitive interface (but better than nothing).

Enter Unified Messaging - NOW, voicemail looks like email. You get one, you click it and its just another email.

It’s simple but exceptionally powerful.

Ok, a difference is that you play voicemail - but the player looks just like a VCR…so we’re home!

Suddenly, without training, every user knows how to play, reply, forward..with or without an introduction, save, and even forward to a group of people and link it to whatever other systems they’re using. Address books are also leveraged, and users can be managed within the same environment.

This advance in software helps user’s ‘get it’ without trying, and when that happens, 90% of people suddenly gained a great deal of productivity without any instruction.

Moreover, when we get that, it’s easier for them to treat email like voicemail when calling in to their office voicemail system. When listening to an email is just like listening to a voicemail, the concept has been transmitted, wordlessly, unlike this post :-), by building on their previous experience of (unified) messaging.

And so it continues, when ‘messaging’ becomes that easy to use, the next step is to eliminate mobile voice messaging, because it’s so much less useful than it ever was.

Extend this same process of interface elimination to fax and text messaging and it goes to reverse the users feeling of being overwhelmed by yet more software to learn - in fact, the roll out could be headed….”we’re giving you less to learn”

In itself, hardly earthshattering - but, in context of a massively overly supplied PC screen, software without training and high adoption rates (that’s what we see) is more than a good thing, it is somewhat exceptional to the norm.

The next frontier

Where are we (users) with ‘real time’ communications software interfaces?

There is one area where this is already working very well, and this is by ‘communications enabling’ a user’s existing interface. Where you ‘telephone enable’ a customer database, for whatever reason, it is possible to extend the users experience, intuitively. Click to dial is a form of this, but quite limited, but another is rules based call routing based on who is calling and why.

However, for most people, personal real time communications includes,

Telephones, Instant Messaging, Audio, Web, and Video conferencing, mobiles and lots more.

And, ‘Nowhere fast’ about sums it up.

To my mind, each best of breed (realtime) company has a piece of the jigsaw, but instead of playing nicely together and just finishing the picture, they’re off constructing the other 80% of the jigsaw pieces themselves. I’m talking about IM, telephony and even public network companies. This isn’t what the users want or need, in my opinion of course.

There are some notable exceptions, but that’s for another time.

It will be interesting how it all pans out, but talk about being ripe for disruptive technology. I expect a lot of free interfaces will come to dominate, before they eventually get you by charging for the upgrades.

My wife uses a Virgin Media mobile phone and was having trouble with the voicemail

Because I work at something vaguely to do with telecoms and communications, my wife, along with the rest of my family and friends, postman and milkman, assume I know everything about everything with a plug or a battery, including mobile phones.

I spent the same amount of time that she did reading the manual and then called the helpline. Two days later, I discovered what had been going wrong and it was fixed.

So, Hero status wasn’t attained, but I noted that all that was required to log into my wifes voicemail was by the device calling its own number. (more…)

The age of ‘Presence’ is on us, with the requisite promises of unlimited contact potential.

A couple of Microsoft attributed quotes lately on the subject

For example, many of the features implemented in a PBX are intended to ensure that calls are not missed and/or do not end up in voicemail: so-called “find-me, follow-me” features. Unified communications uses a fundamentally different paradigm to address the underlying customer need

And another one

Presence based communications: you only attempt to communicate with someone who is advertising their willingness and ability to communicate with you at any given moment

OK, so, I can see the point. Instant messaging is a great overlay, and will give us the very important ability to know if someone is available at their desk.

So, wouldn’t it be neat if Unified Communications could tell me if you’re on the phone? (more…)

I’m an advocate of Gmail, with instant messaging, voice and voicemail built in - this coupled with desktop notification is significantly more useable for me than collections of web and client software from other vendors. Especially impressive is the ability to pick up gmail (and voicemails) on your mobile There is now a meebo-like web embedding of a group web chat facility,

The integration of a RSS reader with the email is more than convenient and with feedburner joining the ranks, I can see all of these things eventually supplementing the google desktop search tool to deliver me a very personalised search and delivery of tailored information.

Google has provided google docs, online hosted documents for groups to share, be updated and notified about. The aquisition of Jotspot hasn’t really hit yet, on the surface at least, but I’m looking forward to some basecamp type project collaboration from that, and now with google aquiring Zenter, we can have online slideshows and presentations too.

Youtube is starting to get quite useful, and I didn’t even mention google maps yet, which apart from giving me a quick, and slick, way to calculate journey times, has now gained a user business review facility

People question whether it is right to trust all your information to google, in the same way we trust banks with our money. But when I used Google Checkout to pay for a new laptop recently, instead of paypal, it occurred to me that many of us already do.

Where’s our unified communications Google? I know we can get voicemail through the mobile email, but surely that’s only the start.

The way I look at it, the term ‘Mobile Presence’ seems to be a contradiciton in terms. 

I originally read this linked article and found myself thinking the issue was very complicated. And now, having mulled it over in terms of whether this technology was something I would actually ‘use’ or not, I’m skeptical.

Leaving aside the ability to see if someone is on the phone or not….till another time at any rate…

My first thought was;

Because I always have my mobile with me does that mean I’m now always present?

Trouble is - I don’t want to instant message via a mobile phone if I can help it - as I’m usually busy being mobile and away from my desk.

Looking back, ‘Presence’ was coined by the Instant Messaging PC client, and therefore, to say I am ‘present’ actually means that I am at my PC desktop and contactable. Not being present means I have wandered off and am not going to respond.

In my book, this concept can’t be extended to a mobile phone, so ‘mobile presence’ is a misnomer. OK, enough with the re-iteration already already.

The meaning of Presence, has started to morph into ‘availability and willingness to interact’, and to that end a lot of discussion is being put into handling contacts, grouping them, and puttings rules against VIP versus double glazing people. And the bottom line is, I’m not sure about this.

So, in the instance I am away from my desk, I would pitch my voicemail against ‘presence’ technology as being most useful. Give me a call, and I’ll decide on the spot whether I’ll answer you or not, and, unlike a rules engine, I won’t ever get it wrong.

So, if I really can’t talk to you now, then leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as it is convenient. Of course, leaving a voicemail should in itself move the conversation onwards, so this isn’t a waste of either your or mine time.

I think that’s a lot easier than maintaining a presence engine via some small mobile screen that you forget to check every ten minutes, don’t you?

So couldn’t the communications industry just define Presence to mean Whether I’m at my desktop, or not?

It’s not perfect, so perhaps we should think more about how conversations are initiated, a more formal process that simulates that so repetitive IM, “can we talk?” 

That permission element is going to be all important

When considering Speech Recognition as an interface for anything, just think about how it is to be used, by whom and where they’re calling from.

Having used Speech Recognition to access Exchange email, calendar, contacts, my CallXpress voicemail and corporate directory for the last two years (we had Exchange 2007 functionality 2 years early from AVST), I have to say that it has been a learning experience.

The first thing to relate is that it is often more comfortable as a solitary activity.

Somehow, you can hear your own voice change when talking to a machine.

It is the trepdiation that you’ll forget the right phrase to use, along with slower and louder speech, which means you end up sounding almost like ‘British person talking to foreign person’. Like an idiot in other words, and after a very short while, a self conscious idiot.

The worst thing is knowing that any slips will result in you having to repeat yourself.

Repeating oneself (no pun intended) is irritating to have to do, not to mention the fact it also attracts instant attention from anybody around you - and thus aptly demonstrates to your colleagues that even a dumb machine can’t be bothered to listen to you.

The funny thing is, most people wait for the machine to finish talking even if they know they can interrupt and they know what the machine is going to say. Such manners abound in the UK, even to inanimate objects that you can’t see!

If you are in a car on your own, this technology is fantastic, hands free and driving licence points saving and reduces home login time sorting through email because you deleted them somewhere near Oxford.

Trust me though, using it in public is about as cool as walking along with a £10 bluetooth headset over the ear.

This link is to a very neat article (thanks Alec) , which points out that the result of worker mobility and remote working, is a growth in conference calls and a demand for presence solutions.

There is a year’s worth of telephone call log data from Cap Gemini’s 9,000 strong organisation to base this on, and so excellent data to work with.

Replacement of ‘face to face’ meetings with an increase in telephone calls and audio conferencing is an obvious one, but also, it is argued, because 80 percent of calls end up in voicemail this is driving users to pre-book calls in advance, driving costs up through multiple calls into conferencing bridges from mobile phones.

Presence is described as bound to emerge as a key element of any provider of communications services.

Trouble is, I’m positive that the Telco and mobile companies don’t see a problem with growth of calls and conferencing! “More conference calls”, “paying for calls twice” must be music to the ears.

   Solid Gold

 In fact, any presence solution, resulting in less calls going to voicemail, and less calls overall, must be an unattractive proposition for the Telco or Mobile Operator.

It will probably fall on companies to implement their own Unified Commmunications solutions, (he says hopefully) making presence enabled, on net, conference calls free of charge, together with binding their own mobile calls to the enterprise to reduce costs.

There is a certain satisfaction when you work out how much easier it is to press a key and ‘forward’ an important voicemail, recording detailed instructions for your unsuspecting colleagues.

It is not only the simplest way to delegate important tasks, it is also quicker and less expensive than mobile network voicemail.

So, it saves money and it’s smart, but still it seems most people still dial their message service, write everything down, and then chase around, calling and leaving messages for other people, probably misinterpreting the original message in the process.

It’s so easy to divert your mobile phone to your office voicemail system, and it’s less to learn, so I don’t know why more people don’t do it.