BT adds service with voicemail

Telecoms giant BT will introduce voicemail for the home to encourage consumers to use the phone more often.

BT has just finished filming a new ad featuring Bob Hoskins, which will air in the autumn. The ad introduces call minder – a telephone-answering service based at the local telephone exchange.

The service, which costs 7 per quarter, takes and stores messages if the phone is in use or not answered. Messages can then be retrieved from any tone dialling phone – at home or abroad.

Head of market growth campaigns Tim Green says the aim of the initiative is to encourage people to make full use their phones. He adds that 93 per cent of homes have phones installed.

“It is ingrained in the British culture that price is an issue, so people should use the phone as little as possible,” says Green.

“We are adding new services to try to change people’s perception and create the conditions for them to make more use of their phones.”

Call minder is one of a number of services to be launched. Another, call diversion, enables calls to be diverted from your home to any other number, and call return gives the number of the last person who dialled.

The services will be advertised this month to key BT customers through a direct mail campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather Direct, before the autumn TV campaign, which is devised by Abbott Mead Vickers. BBDO.