As mobile technology advances and matures, so is the experience that comes with messaging. For the past 25 years, we have seen how mobile messaging has changed: from the advent of calls and rise of text messaging, all the way to the proliferation of mobile chat apps and video calls.
Today, a new platform has started to gain momentum and is said to change the way people communicate and engage with others in various environments. Voice chat, also known as voice messaging, is becoming an increasingly popular communication method among consumers and business.
Voice Chat: Bringing Back the “Human” in Electronic Conversation
Since the apparent demise of phone calls in 2007, the way people communicate electronically has yielded many societal benefits. People can go wherever they want and stay connected with their friends as they desire. Gone are the days when people have to answer urgent late-night telephone calls, and dull phone conversations can now be easily ended just by saying that you have poor signal reception.
However, this freedom from intrusive phone calls also comes at a cost: the human voice. Since the rise of texting, electronic conversations have become bland and monotonous. Although instant, texting has also become an effective medium for telling deceptive information to friends, families, and even employers. Indeed, the shift from phone calls to texting has led many to hope for the good old days of telephones to come back.
With the rise of voice chat, many are optimistic that it will bring back the “human” in electronic conversations that they used to experience. As the middle ground between texting and calling, we can expect that voice chat will help people to achieve the perfect balance between socialization and respect for people’s time and convenience.
Phone Calls and Text Messaging vs. Voice Messages
While both phone calls and voice messaging provide more “intimate” and “natural” experience than written messages, there are still nuances between the two which makes people choose the latter.
According to a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, mobile phone calls are far too complicated to execute these days; an employee has to dial a bunch of numbers, wait until the recipient answers, all without knowing if the other end will pick up their device or not.
A typical call conversation is also time-consuming; it starts with self-identification and pleasantries before the actual message can be conveyed, and then more small talk, and finally, the conversation ends.
Voice messaging, on the other hand, is more time-efficient to use because it only requires the sender to record the actual message then hit the send button immediately – very much like text messaging, instant and no-fuss.
But compared to text messaging, voice chats are more nuanced, more sophisticated, and more intimate because voice carries so much more emotion than 160 characters can convey. Voice chat eliminates the endless misunderstandings and social blunders that often result from instant messaging, but at the same time, it is more time-efficient and more convenient than traditional calls.
Advantages of Voice Chat:
The WSJ cited three reasons why voice chat is essentially the future of communications:
- A better version of voice mail – Voice messaging takes the benefits of voice mail by allowing a person to send and receive messages anytime and anywhere, all without the need for a business to invest in dedicated hardware.
- Get to it later – Unlike traditional phone calls, voice messages are less intrusive. If you received a voice message, you would be able to listen to it whenever you can and whenever you feel like it.
- Chat from everywhere – Many Android and iOS wearable devices today have voice messaging capabilities, allowing users to send and receive voice chats even without their smartphones.
Aside from these advantages, many consumer apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and Telegram provide voice messaging capabilities to their users. With BYOD culture becoming more prevalent than ever, it’s only a matter of time until voice messaging becomes a norm in the modern workplace.
Compliance Dilemma Around Voice Messaging
Despite the advantages that voice messaging offers, its full impact is yet to be known. However, there is one aspect that businesses must consider before they allow the use of voice chat as a means of communication within their organization: Compliance.
Several industries, such as Financial, Public Sector, and Healthcare are bound by regulatory requirements to capture, retain, and supervise SMS messages, phone calls, video calls, Instant Messages (IMs), emails, chat logs, and now – voice messages, regardless of the mobile device used to send and receive said messages.
Regulations such as FINRA, SEC, MiFID II, HIPAA, Dodd-Frank, and SOX all require organizations in the financial and healthcare industries to have an archiving platform system in place that will enable them to meet their recordkeeping requirements.
As such, for companies already allowing their employees to use voice messaging for transmitting business-related correspondence, it is important to invest in an enterprise mobile archiving platform that will enable them to capture all types of mobile content, including voice messages, to avoid hefty fines and legal issues from non-compliance.
TeleMessage’s enterprise mobile archiving platform is a messaging app dedicated to companies that want to take advantage of the emerging communication channels such as voice messaging without violating various data protection and message archiving requirements.
To learn more about our enterprise messaging platforms, visit our website today at www.telemessage.com
