Unhappy Visual Voicemails for Telstra

Telstra have announced today that they are supporting visual voicemail for the iPhone.

Yet after just a few hours in the market, this little feature announcement is now becoming an interesting test of character for the 'new' Telstra.

The new feature announcement is causing quite a stir on the Telstra Exchange Blog and what Telstra does next is going to be the important thing in re-affirming their new approach to customers.

The Visual Voicemail feature has been available on iPhones for almost 3 years now, but iPhone users could not use this feature unless the network supported it. Telstra has not supported it and only Vodafone has offered this feature in Australia so far. Vodafone offer it for free.

Visual Voicemail is designed to fix the biggest problem with voicemail as it stands right now…when you call your voicemail account to retrieve messages you have no idea what is in the voicemail box and you can only listen to messages in chronological order in terms of most recent messages first.

The user interface design in voicemail is outdated - the 'skip', 'save', 'delete' functions are triggered with the numerical keypad of your phone, 'i.e. press 5 to delete' so that you have to bring the phone up and back to your face with each message and you miss parts of the message.

To fix this problem, Apple created Visual Voicemail. Here's what it does:

• You can see all your voicemail messages on the iPhone before retrieving only the messages you choose (see picture)
• Select specific messages to listen to in any order
• See who the voicemail is from based on your contacts list
• Delete specific messages without having to call in and delete.

Telstra have announced that this feature is now supported on their network, but want to charge $5 per month and are not calling it Visual Voicemail (although it clearly is) and they are calling it Message Bank Plus. It is clearly Visual Voicemail.

Telstra have been on a hot streak with customers of late, but it looks like they may have misjudged the customer base by adding a fee for this feature, especially when it is so late to the market.

And here's the test for Telstra. On the Telstra Blog, the comments are all negative, and there are lots of them.

The old Telstra would have ignored the disaggregated feedback in the old world e.g. a Letters to the Editor or two in newspapers around the country etc.

Yet, the New Telstra can't ignore comments like these on their Telstra Blog…

Dear o’h dear… What was Telstra thinking?? I hope David Thodey reads these comments. Recently, I have been very surprised with the steps Telstra has taken to improve all aspects of its customer service. There have been some real wins, not to mention they have the best network by a mile. So, its no surprise that alot of my friends are starting to move back to Telstra.. And then THIS….?Telstra, you seem to have a habit of going one step forward and two steps backwards.?Move with the times – this should’ve always been a FREE service.?Mr Thodey,…. its not too late.

It is what they do next that defines if we really have a new Telstra. If they listen to the comments and remove the fee, then we really are looking at a responsive customer focussed telco. Let's hope they listen.

Some more of the choice comments:

So, almost three years after launching the iPhone in Australia, Telstra has finally gotten around to enabling Visual Voicemail? Poor effort really.

I hope the $5 a month goes toward funding other three-year-late innovations. I love the Telstra network, but cheap nonsense like this is insulting. Why is the download of this voicemail data (that’s all it is, data) not simply counted towards your monthly data allowance? Or better still, just… included?

Vodafone runs theirs through their data.. not voice so it should be the same with telstra or are you just trying to mislead your users.. fancy slugging $5 for this service you must be the only carrier in the world to charge for it!!! very greedy of you…. sure other users agree!

Check all the comments at the Telstra Exchange Blog

Cameron Craig

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