A company’s main goal in using voice mail is to be efficient and save money.

It’s a long shot, but if this revolt ever succeeds, grateful telephone users may someday erect a statue to Ed Crutchfield, the man who fired the shot heard round the world against voice mail.
    Joyful employees stood and applauded last month when Crutchfield, chairman of First Union Bank in Charlotte, N.C. sent out a memo ordering the bank to "press 1 to disconnect now" from its hated voice-mail system.
    "The next time I call and get an answering machine, we’re going to be minus one telephone answering machine operator", warned Crutchfield’s memo.
    His memo has become a rallying point of voice-mall haters, who say the computerized phone answering systems symbolize the contempt some businesses display for their customers and that government agencies show for the taxpayers.
    One reason we chafe at voice mail may be buried deep within the human psyche, according m new research conducted at Stanford University. The technology violates basic rules of human communication that have existed since the first cavemen grunted at each other, according to Clifford Nass, art assistant professor of communication at Stanford.
    "When people hear a human voice, it sets off’ strong cues within their brain, and it sets up certain expectations", Nass said. "This is a very hard-wired, visceral response".
    One Bay Area business is even capitalizing on our loathing of voice mail in its advertising campaign.
    Take Care Health Plan, the concord-based health maintenance plan that covers 230,000 members in California, doesn’t advertise that it has the most liberal coverage or doctors with the warmest bedside manner. It advertises that its members don’t have to suffer through voice mail when they call.
    "If you have a question, press 1, now. If you would like it answered, press 2, now. If you would like to be put on hold for 10 minutes, press 3, now", the ads say, lampooning their competitors’ impenetrable voice-mail systems. "If you want a membership card, please punch in Beethoven’s Fifth, now, in D minor".
    Instead of using a computer, Take-Care employs 12 human operators to handle calls from its customers on its toll-free line. On an average day, they handle 1,170 inquiries.
    "Voice mail erects a wall between service industries and their customers", said Mike Massaro of Goldberg Moser O’Neill, the agency that created the campaign.
    The people who make voice mail say none of this is the fault of the technology. The problem, they insist, lies with users who do a shoddy job of programming their systems.
    "People will love it eventually", predicts Maria DeMarco, marketing director for Pacific Bell Voice Mail.
    Most of the acrimony toward voice mail could be eliminated, says DeMarco, if system users made sure callers always had an easy way to punch out of the system and talk to a live human being.
    And voice-mail supporters point out that pushing buttons or talking to a recording can’t be any more irritating than listening to a busy signal or a phone ringing endlessly without being answered.
    There’s one person who never gets tired of hearing that disembodied voice say, "or, press 1, for more options". That’s because Joan Kenley of Oakland loves hearing her own voice.
    Kenley, a former singer who has performed with Ethel Merman, is the voice of voice mail. Northern Telecom, Pacific Bell and other major system suppliers have hired her because oscilloscope tests show her intonations retain warmth and "smile" on a computer chip. "I’m everywhere", she says. "I’m ubiquitous".