世論 What Japan Thinks

I hate my mobile phone answering service! I’ve set mine up in English, which is useful, but after I play back the message, there is a prompt saying “Press 2 to save the message.” I do that but it always gets deleted! Is the save only a session save, not a save forever? Is this just DoCoMo’s easy way of avoiding users storing too many voice mail messages? In addition, I find the handset’s built in service is worse than useless. To discover what the average Japanese person thinks, MyVoice surveyed its internet community to find out what they thought about mobile phone answering services.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of July 2007 13,191 members of the MyVoice internet community answered a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Most people seem to have some degree of satisfaction with their network-based voice mail, but perhaps this is just people thinking it’s better than just the handset voice mail? Then again, most people are also satisified with the built-in voice mail. Note that DoCoMo charge 300 yen per month for the use of the network answering machine, and the other carriers have similar charges.

Oh, and I promise not to mention the iPhone’s visual voice mail in this post. Oops!

Research results

Q1: Which mobile phone service provider do you currently use? If you have multiple providers, choose the one you use the most. (Sample size=13,191)

DoCoMo	43.2%
au	28.9%
SoftBank	19.4%
WILLCOM	2.6%
Other	0.6%
Don’t have a mobile phone	5.3%

Q2: Do you use the network-based answering machine or the handset’s built-in answering machine? (Sample size=mobile phone users)

Network-based answering service	13.8%
Mobile phone built-in answering phone	41.8%
Both	14.4%
Neither	24.3%
Don’t know about these features	5.1%
Other	0.4%
No answer	0.2%

Q3: How satsified are you with the network-based answering machine service? (Sample size=network answering machine users)

Satisfied (to SQ1)	12.2%
Somewhat satisfied (to SQ1)	42.3%
Can’t say either way	24.4%
Somewhat dissatisfied (to SQ2)	17.8%
Dissatisfied (to SQ2)	3.1%
No answer	0.2%

Q3SQ1: Which features of the network-based answering service are you satisfied with? (Sample size=satisfied network answering machine users, multiple answer)

Message recording length	34.2%
How to use service	32.6%
Number of messages that can be recorded	30.1%
How to configure service	19.5%
Fees for service	15.4%
Outgoing message length	14.4%
Other	8.7%
No answer	2.9%

Q3SQ2: Which features of the network-based answering service are you dissatisfied with? (Sample size=dissatisfied network answering machine users, multiple answer)

Fees for service	78.6%
How to use service	31.9%
Message recording length	11.8%
Outgoing message length	10.7%
How to configure service	10.0%
Number of messages that can be recorded	8.3%
Other	8.1%
No answer	1.6%

Q4: How satsified are you with your handset’s answering machine functions? (Sample size=handset answering machine users)

Satisfied (to SQ1)	13.4%
Somewhat satisfied (to SQ1)	46.7%
Can’t say either way	23.9%
Somewhat dissatisfied (to SQ2)	12.4%
Dissatisfied (to SQ2)	1.6%
No answer	2.0%

Q4SQ1: Which features of your handset’s answering machine are you satisfied with? (Sample size=satisfied handset answering machine users, multiple answer)

Lack of fees for service	38.2%
Message recording length	28.7%
How to use service	25.4%
Number of messages that can be recorded	25.0%
How to configure service	24.4%
Outgoing message length	12.0%
Other	5.0%
No answer	2.7%

Q4SQ2: Which features of your handset’s answering machine are you dissatisfied with? (Sample size=dissatisfied handset answering machine users, multiple answer)

Message recording length	59.7%
Number of messages that can be recorded	49.8%
How to use service	20.2%
How to configure service	15.5%
Outgoing message length	8.3%
Lack of fees for service	6.3%
Other	6.1%
No answer	0.6%

No, I don’t know either why people would be dissatisfied that a service was free!

Q5: What do you think is an appropriate length for your handset’s outgoing message? (Sample size=handset answering machine users)

15 seconds	38.2%
30 seconds	42.5%
Sixty seconds	11.7%
Two minutes	2.6%
Other	2.9%
No answer	2.1%