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Principal Sponsors:
 | Unified Messaging |
4. Benefits for Service Providers
Examples of Unified Messaging Implementation Scenarios
Essential to the success of deploying unified messaging to a market is understanding the needs of the diverse market segments. By mixing and matching various unified messaging applications, service providers can increase market penetration, maximize revenues, and stimulate interest for more unified messaging functionality.
The Messaging-Savvy Subscriber
The premium-class subscriber will be one of the first to adopt fully enhanced unified messaging. Whether these subscribers are heavy messaging users at home or small office home office (SOHO) business entrepreneurs, with unified messaging they have a means of saving time and increasing productivity by having access to all their messages—voice, fax, and e-mail.
With text-to-speech technology, subscribers are able to hear their e-mail from any phone. Using standard voice protocols, they are able to hear their voice messages on a PC. Future services can tie even more applications into the unified mailbox. Consumers can have their unified mailbox become a personal agent, sending personalized information and notification preset by the subscriber. For example, the traveling salesperson who may be delayed at an airport is still able to stay in touch with the office. With unified messaging, the salesperson is able to check voice messages, e-mail, and faxes all from the convenience of an airport telephone.
The Casual E-Mail Subscriber
More and more people are subscribing to e-mail at home because more and more companies are offering the service for free. Many of those subscribers may only be casual e-mail users. They check e-mail infrequently and do not depend on it for communication. This presents another market segment that can take advantage of unified messaging.
For these subscribers, service providers can offer added value through a more basic form of unified messaging by offering consumers a voice-mail service that notifies them of e-mail messages. These subscribers can be notified of any new e-mail messages through their phones. This can reduce the number of unnecessary log-ins and eliminate the frustration caused by wasted time checking empty e-mail boxes.
The Single-Line Home
The majority of Internet households spend forty-five to seventy-four minutes in a single Internet session. (State of the Net, 1998). In a household with a single phone line, this means lost calls during Internet sessions. However, for a household subscribing to unified messaging, the calls can still be picked up.
With unified messaging, subscribers do not have to disconnect to know if a phone call has come in. They can access their voice mailboxes while on-line. With a visual interface, either through a Web browser or popular e-mail client, they can find out who left a message, when, and the length of the message. They also have the option of listening to their messages from their multimedia PC if they wish.
Disparate Messaging Preferences
Building messaging communities means erasing mediacentric barriers. People who prefer using e-mail should be allowed to communicate with people who prefer voice mail, and vice versa. Unified messaging can be applied here to bridge e-mail and voice-mail communities, expanding the messaging network.
For example, the student who has a school-funded e-mail account wishes to message his parents. However, his parents do not have an e-mail account but do subscribe to voice mail. With a powerful unified messaging application, the student can record a voice message and send it via e-mail to his parents' voice mailbox. The parents receive that voice message and never even know that it was sent via e-mail. Instead they treat it as any voice message and can reply, forward, save, or delete it. If they reply, it is sent back to their son as an e-mail with a voice message attachment.
Wireless Phone Subscribers
Subscribers of digital wireless phones can also take advantage of unified messaging to access their messages. Through the handset display they access their mailbox and see a listing of their voice, fax, and e-mail messages. They can then use the softkeys of the handset to select the message to which they wish to listen.
Fax Subscribers
For subscribers who like to use a fax machine, having a unified mailbox will provide them with added fax functionality. Not only will they be able to print faxes to the destination of their choice, but they can also view their faxes directly from their PC. They can treat the fax as they would a voice message, with reply, forward, and save capabilities.
With unified messaging, subscribers can also have text-to-fax functionality—directing e-mail to a designated fax machine to be viewed in hardcopy. For example, a soccer coach has just e-mailed his assistant coach the new team roster. The assistant coach is at a clinic and has just heard the e-mail through text-to-speech technology. Instead of writing all of the names down on a separate sheet of paper, the assistant coach simply forwards the e-mail to the clinic's local fax number and picks up the fax when convenient.
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