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May 13, 2010

Goodbye, broadcast messages

This broadcast message includes … a recommendation to eliminate Pitt’s broadcast message service.

Computing Services and Systems Development director Jinx Walton said she’s making the call to terminate the service based in part on a recent survey in which nearly 9 out of 10 respondents said the compilation of announcements and promotional messages provided through CSSD was not useful or was only minimally useful.

“There are so many other ways to reach people, this one’s no longer relevant,” Walton said.

About 1,780 people (36 percent) responded to the survey sent last month to the University’s 4,875 voicemail subscribers by CSSD in conjunction with the University Senate computer usage committee.

Committee co-chair Alexandros Labrinidis told Faculty Assembly at its May 4 meeting, “We’ve been hearing anecdotal evidence in the committee, and by reports from other people, that they don’t like broadcast voicemail messages. We now have factual evidence. The conclusion is this is not useful; it’s a nuisance, more nuisance than it’s worth. We’re going to recommend that this is suspended, and we’re going to be coming up with alternative methods for these messages to be delivered, possibly on a web site.”

While about 13 percent of respondents found the service somewhat, very or extremely useful, 64.5 percent said the message service was not useful and 22.3 percent found it minimally useful.

Nearly two-thirds admitted to never listening to the announcements, which typically are sent about four times per month.

Though 32 percent said they’d like to see the broadcast messages eliminated completely, more than 55 percent of respondents preferred the messages be delivered in some other format such as on a web site or portal.

Labrinidis said some used the words “annoying,” “hassle,” “waste of time” and “useless nuisance” to describe the broadcast messages. Others labeled the messages “audio spam.”

Walton said University phone users have been extremely vocal in opposing the broadcast messages. “To date, no one is coming forward in strong support of keeping these messages,” she said.

Some who missed the survey deadline went so far as to contact the technology help desk to register their opinions. “People feel they have spam filters for email; [they say] can’t we filter out these messages?” Walton said. Many workers view voicemail as a necessity but consider the broadcast messages a burden because there is no easy way to opt out, she said.

Noting the 36 percent response rate, Walton said she planned to use the survey information as a basis for making the decision to eliminate the messages.

She was amenable to developing a way to deliver the information in a way that would offer the best of both worlds — humoring both those users who don’t want the messages at all, yet taking into account that more than half of the survey respondents were open to receiving the information in some other format.

Exactly how to deliver the messages has yet to be determined, but a web site or RSS feed to which users could subscribe are possibilities.

She said she hopes to roll out the new format in time for the fall term.

—Kimberly K. Barlow & Peter Hart


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