Home Articles Hello! You’ve reached someone’s voicemail… again

Hello! You’ve reached someone’s voicemail… again

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The most common target of a business phone call is not human. Well, not directly human, anyway.

Voice mail is the most frequently called number, according to an ambitious report by The Full Circle Group, an Australian telecommunications cost management firm. Oh, and that phone number is most likely to be placed at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday — the most common time for all business calls.

The report also implied some telephonic hanky-panky — 11.7% of all telco business costs were incurred from weekend phone calls. Were some of these calls strictly job-related? Probably. The Full Circle survey infers that many were not.

The report pored over 3.5 years of communications records for more than 400 Full Circle clients. That’s 27,000 mobile phones, 10,000 fixed lines, 11.5 million phone calls and $50.5 million in annual telecommunications spending. Phew.

Going back to those voice mails — as Full Circle is all about telco cost management, their news release about the report pointed out that productivity could be increased if the voicemails were converted to text and pushed to a smartphone.

Other findings in the report:

  • Eight percent of telco costs are generated by calls that occur between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. As with the weekend calls, Full circle implies that a chunk of these aren’t in the business’ best interests.
  • The least-used time for phone calls is 2 a.m. on Monday. Says the Full Circle release: “Implication: Stay tucked up in bed dreaming about the exciting working week ahead and turn the phone off.”
  • Calls between company-owned fixed lines — office-to-office and the like — account for about 11% of all costs generated by fixed of mobile lines.
  • About 57% of all fixed-line costs are related to service and equipment.
  • The average monthly costs for phones were $159 per mobile and $102 per fixed line.
  • Talk time for mobile phones averaged 7.5 hours a month. Surprisingly low, eh?
  • The average voice mail is 38 seconds long, compared to 161 seconds for mobile-to-fixed line call.
  • Mobile phone users average 77 text messages a month
  • Average call duration over the past three years has increased by about 20 seconds. Makes one wonder what more we have to say. “What was that? Your phone’s cutting out. Call me back when you’ve got more bars, OK? Can you hear me?” That’s about 10 seconds …

Image by Seattle Municipal Archives