February 2000

BY KEVIN MAYER

Those who would promote unified messaging must be puzzled. For all of its promise, unified messaging has yet to amass a following anywhere near the size you’d expect of a "killer app." What went wrong? Weren’t the benefits of unified messaging well articulated? Or did no one ask whether unified messaging lacked something crucial, something for which no packaging -- no matter how slick or creative -- could compensate? These are the questions that the supporters of unified messaging now entertain. To their credit, many supporters of unified messaging are willing to acknowledge they’ve had their disappointments. What’s more, they’re prepared to rethink unified messaging, and to entertain speculation about what went wrong, and about what may yet propel unified messaging to prominence.

AFTER THE CONCESSION SPEECH
Fortunately for unified messaging, it won’t have to observe the sort of rituals that are all but mandatory in electoral politics. In politics, a failed campaign is invariably followed by a reporter’s visit to campaign headquarters, where the camera pans over the dispirited staffers and hangers on, and ultimately focuses on the former candidate, who is obliged to congratulate the victor, all the while maintaining just the right combination of sorrow and equanimity.

What happens next is more interesting, even though it is seldom considered newsworthy. The former candidate has a chance to reflect on the campaign, to speak freely, to admit uncertainty, to sound like a human being again, instead of a pre-programmed automaton spouting the usual sound bites.

It is at this stage that politicians seem most appealing. And it is this stage in which we now find the supporters of unified messaging. Since unified messaging hasn’t suffered so acute a setback as a lost election, it can skip the painful ritual at campaign headquarters. Still, unified messaging has experienced chronic difficulties, so it may well consider new approaches, ways in which it may reposition itself, as well as ways in which it might augment its existing strengths.

TESTING THE WATERS
Lately, we’ve been hearing various suggestions about what might take unified messaging into the mainstream. One suggestion, discussed by one of our columnists in the current issue, is for unified messaging to position itself less as a premises-based application, and more as a service, the better to benefit once bandwidth becomes more abundant. (For details, see Brian Strachman’s Analytical Views. This month, his piece is entitled "Unified Messaging + DSL = Killer App.")

Another suggestion, which I’ve heard from various unified messaging vendors, is to discuss benefits beyond the convenience of a single, all-purpose inbox. According to these vendors, the new benefit that should be emphasized is the ability of many unified messaging systems to render the form of a message less and less relevant, thereby allowing users to focus on message content.

How does this work? With technologies such as text to speech and speech to text, as well as better optical character recognition, the form in which a message is received need not determine the form in which the message is read, or heard. Further, remote access to messages needn’t be limited to downloading e-mail messages via a laptop (through a Web-based interface, perhaps), or listening to voice mail messages over a phone. Instead, it is becoming increasingly practical to review messages of all types over the phone. If nothing else, you can have e-mail headers and fax headers read to you over the phone.

In addition, the form in which you review a message needn’t be the form in which you respond to a message. Today, we take it for granted that the easiest way to respond to an e-mail is to hit the reply button, and respond with another e-mail. What if it were more convenient — or, in the user’s view, more advantageous — to respond with a voice call, even if only to leave a voice mail message? And what if the unified messaging system were designed to make it as easy to respond that way as it would to be to respond with another e-mail message? That is, what if the convenience of the obvious response were matched by the convenience of alternative responses, whether by voice or fax or something else?

JUMPING ON THE BANDWAGON
Positioning unified messaging as a way to make the form of messages arbitrary could be a good idea, particularly if all the hype about special-purpose information appliances turns out to be true. As the choice of appliances (including wireless devices) became more arbitrary, and more a matter of personal taste, so would the choice of message format. That is, the message format would be determined by whatever happened to be most convenient. Coincidence or cunning? Who could say? But who would care?

CONSOLIDATING GAINS
If users warmed to the idea that they could be as arbitrary as they pleased with respect to format, then users would be able to appreciate another advantage of unified messaging. Namely, the way unified messaging lends itself to comprehensive searches of personal message libraries. The most obvious benefit? Redundant messages would be so readily exposed. For example, a voice mail, a fax, and an e-mail on the same subject could be presented together, or reduced to one message.

Eventually, more sophisticated message handling schemes could be devised. Why should sorting through message after message demand the user’s attention? Why couldn’t categorization be automated? E-mail ACD is making headway in the call center environment, why couldn’t some adaptation of e-mail ACD apply on the user’s desktop? Instead of routing e-mail messages to different agents with different specialties, why not route messages (of all sorts) to the appropriate folders and subfolders, which would be determined by the user’s interests?

The next step would be for the sifting and sorting to be accomplished in even more sophisticated ways. That is, it’s relatively easy to think of ways to search through messages when you know what you’re looking for. But what about the unexpected? What about items that might interest you, were you only aware of them, despite their being lost in a swarm of irrelevant messages? For messages of this sort, your message-handling system would have to anticipate you in some ways, or at the least permit some level of serendipity. But the question of automating serendipity would take us far away from the more immediate challenges facing unified messaging. For now, let’s keep an eye on the unified messaging space, reminding ourselves that despite a few early setbacks, unified messaging has opportunities ahead, and more than enough ingenuity and will to embrace these opportunities in new campaigns.