COURTESY HAWAIIAN TELCOM Hawaiian Telcom's Call Choice plan allows users to listen to and forward their voice mail messages via e-mail, saving airtime minutes and even screening annoying callers. Above, an example of a voice mail message sent through the system. CLICK FOR LARGE

You've got (voice) mail

Hawaiian Telcom's new service sends voice messages to your e-mail inbox

Earlier this year, Hawaiian Telcom added a new feature to its wireless service that lets customers receive voice mail messages via e-mail, allowing them to select the most important ones and retrieve those first.

The service, named Call Choice Visual Voicemail, also lets customers forward voice mail -- to staff members of a business, for example. No more transcribing messages or hoping the information gets conveyed in full. This saves time, increases efficiency and preserves precious airtime minutes.

The voice mail messages appear as on the computer as audio files, not text. You listen to them from your speakers, just as you would on the phone. But at least one business owner who has ventured into the new technology says she can't imagine running her company without it.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Kay Mukaigawa, principal broker of Primary Properties, and Nelson Oyadomari, senior loan officer for Primary Residential Mortgage, demonstrated the Call Choice Visual Voicemail system in downtown Honolulu earlier this month. Mukaigawa said the system, which routes wireless phones' voice mail to computer e-mail, saves her as much as an hour a day. CLICK FOR LARGE

That alone, along with her increased ability to delegate tasks, has saved her at least an hour each day and increased the productivity of her company, she says.

"Whoever's picking up the message knows exactly what was said," said Mukaigawa, president and principal broker of Primary Properties, a real estate company with 20 employees. Furthermore, she and her staff mastered the system in a few days.

Other businesses are beginning to catch on, but Hawaiian Telcom's Call Choice Visual Voicemail service faces public relations issues right out of the box. Who wants more e-mail?

Yet a brief tutorial suggests that the system unveiled in January -- a "suite of products" or "hub," according to executives at the company -- can be an ideal solution for those willing to tailor it to their needs.

"As you see it and use it, you find what works best for you, because everyone wants something different," Ono said of the system.

Mukaigawa said she hasn't come across any serious downsides to the system, though she admits that people who don't clear out their e-mail on a daily basis might become overwhelmed. At press time, she still had not received her first bill, but thinks it will drop her costs significantly.

Either way, it's worth it, she said: "I don't see how you can do business without something like this."

» What it does: With this system, "you can see all 17 voice mail messages, and return the most urgent ones immediately," said Cara Yamaguchi Kakuda, director of wireless business sales at Hawaiian Telcom. You can reply, file, or delete each one as you wish. It also gives you a visual, easy-to-manage archive of important messages for business or legal purposes.

» About the e-mail: When asked how to manage and file these extra e-mails, Hawaiian Telcom account manager Kevin Ono said he set his computer to send the voice mails directly into a folder, filing them automatically. And they're easily located when he needs them. Your cell phone is synchronized only with the Call Choice software; messages go to the voice mail platform, and from there they get delivered to your phone and e-mail box. Hawaiian Telcom doesn't have any connection to your e-mail.

» How to respond: If you want to call back from the computer, you can select which phone you want to dial from -- office or cell -- and the computer will ring that phone first. You pick up, and the call continues to the person you want to reach. Or you can respond with a text message.

» Bonus: All of this saves precious airtime minutes that disappear in the vacuum of listening to long voice mail messages (sometimes repeatedly).

» Memory issues (your computer's, not yours): A typical 20-second voice mail uses approximately 29K of memory. In other words, not much. But even if you delete the voice mail from your computer, it remains stored on Hawaiian Telcom's Web site for up to one year. So you still could retrieve it.

Other features bundled with the voice mail service include the ability to:

» Transfer incoming calls anywhere you want, basically a high-octane version of call forwarding that finds you no matter where you are. This allows you to give your clients one number instead of three. Your management of this number will allow phones in different locations to ring in sequence or all at once until you answer. This also saves airtime minutes, allowing you to answer the land line when you are near one. Unlike call forwarding, you can transfer to another line as the call is coming in.

» Screen beyond caller identification. Hawaiian Telcom's program allows you to listen in real time to the person leaving a message, and pick up if it's urgent.

» Ignore annoying callers. You can program the phone never to ring when that person calls, and he or she will never get to voice mail. Conversely, the most important callers will be notified, "The person you are calling would like to speak with you. Please hold while we connect your call."

» Send faxes (if anyone still does that). You can receive them via e-mail with the fax attached as a PDF file. This ensures that someone else doesn't pick up your potentially sensitive correspondence when it rolls out of the machine.