We all lose as voice mail fades into the past

Voice mail is dying — has been for years, apparently. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced recently that it's hanging up on voice mail for tens of thousands of workers in its consumer banking division.

Too pricey at $10 a month per line, the bank says, and unnecessary in an age of smartphones, texts and e-mails.

Chase is following in the footsteps of Coca-Cola, which ditched voice mail for its employees last year. Other big companies are expected to continue the trend.

It's inevitable that the technologies of the 20th century will give way to those of the 21st. Communication will reflect the needs of a society that is increasingly tethered to digital devices.

But the playing field now clearly favors the business world, which can dictate the terms of any conversation with customers.

"If you have a problem, you want to be expressive," said Jonathan Barsky, an associate professor of marketing at the University of San Francisco. "Voice mail allows you to do that."

Timothy Black, 51, a lawyer in Newport Beach, Calif., told me that he had real problems with American Airlines after a flight to New York was canceled and his travel plans fell apart. Bookings for hotels and rental cars soared in price, and luggage went missing.

Black said that when he tried to contact the airline to complain, he couldn't get a number for American's customer relations department.

"If you call reservations, they tell you to go to the Web and send an e-mail," he said.

I tried it myself. I called American's "general inquiries" number and, after about 20 minutes on hold, was told that if I wanted to complain about a recent flight, I'd need to contact customer relations online.

Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the airline, said keeping such conversations digital allows American "to respond to customers in the most expeditious way possible."

Good enough for you? Me, neither.

Steve Blank, a professor of entrepreneurship at University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, said consumers will have to adapt to changing times. Younger people already prefer digital communications, he said, and most businesses will change how they operate to meet the needs of tomorrow's consumers.

I asked Alex Quilici, of Irvine, Calif., what we can expect from answering machines of the future. He's chief executive of YouMail, a maker of an app that's touted as a digital personal assistant capable of managing both phone and text messages.

Quilici said voice mail won't go away entirely. It'll just get smarter.

"Eventually, a lot of your communications will have a robot handling them," he said.