Upgrades to Ball State University's voicemail options offer more ways to listen to voicemails. However, while staff and faculty subscribe to the service, it is being overlooked by students.
Mark Watters, interim director of telephone and postal services, said the department has seen about 200 new subscribers since the launch of the new features in early November.
Faculty and staff make up most of that number, however, and there has been a small increase in the number of students using the service, Watters said.
The new features include e-mail notifications of voicemail and the ability to use a computer to play voicemails back, view and print faxes and the ability to respond by e-mail to the person who called, he said.
"I think students would be interested in the service," Watters said, "but it's also a matter of what they are able to spend their money on."
Watters said voicemail service was available to subscribers with landlines on campus.
The enhanced service is free for standard voicemail users, and voicemail accounts costs $5 a month, he said.
Watters also said the program's limited marketing budget is part of the problem with bringing in new student users. No problems have been reported by those who use the service, he said.
"Overall, we're very pleased with the overall performance," he said.
Faculty and staff seem to enjoy the enhanced features, Watters said.
Nancy Prater, Web coordinator for the Department of Marketing and Communications, said she was pleased with the new features.
"It's a pretty sophisticated system," she said. "I'm loving how quick and easy it is for me to access and respond to my voicemail."
Long automated menus make navigating her voicemail time consuming, she said.
"E-mail notifications are easier and quicker to read," Prater said. "I'm more of a Web-based person, so this is more efficient for me."
Prater said she especially enjoyed the fact that she could forward voicemail messages to another phone number or another recipient's e-mail account.
"I rarely pick up the phone anymore to listen to voicemails," she said. "I can play a message back multiple times and slow it down when someone rushes through their phone number."
Watters said students, faculty and staff who were interested in signing up for the service could visit Telephone Services' Web site or call Aaron Lindburgh at 285-8277.
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