Voicemail is just another tool for communication. It allows for one way communication towards you, which might be useless in most cases but indispensable in some.

If you are someone who conducts a lot of business over the phone, voicemail is a must. If someone "important" is trying to call you / get hold of you and you are unavailable, your default goal should be to "reduce friction" for the other person to get the message to you! ("important" usually means they are really busy and they value their time a lot, and you should too.... Clients, Board, Investors, Counsel, Accountant, your managers, doctor, etc... ). Having voicemail disabled and requiring people to text you or email you after having tried to call you (which usually means it's time sensitive / important-ish) is adding more friction/resistance in the communications line. It also comes off as very unprofessional. What if you don't have their number saved on your phone or they call from an unknown number and you don't know who the miss call is from...adds a lot of lag in the communication pipeline.

Voicemail also allows you to take your time in getting back to someone if you don't want to / can't have a conversation right away, but you want to know what they might want to talk about. You can then prepare for the topic and call back.

My iPhone does a decent job at converting voicemail-to-text (at&t visual voicemail). I can quickly scroll through my voicemails, delete stuff from marketers/advertisements and call back important ones after reading/listening to the message. Voicemail has definitely help me prepare for important call-back more than a few times (especially while dealing with general counsel).

I would never disable my voicemail or let my inbox get full (voicemail inboxes filling up might be a "thing of the past" very soon!)

Switched it off in 2003.. enabled it again in 2005 because of a practical joke by a friend who had my new manager made it a requirement for the new job.. :D

Switched it off soon after again. Reason is mainly that 99.9% of the voicemails left were work related (I only keep one phone# for everything) ahem, "lazy bullshit". It seems most (middle) management is constantly leaving messages about non-issues, for me to deal with. Texting is a miniscule additional "hurdle" which filters this out for me.

I had several discussions proving my point.

  [Bill Lumbergh]"Yeah, could you please enable your voice mail?"
  [Me]"Well, if it is important you can text me, I'll get right back to you"
  [Bill]"but that is less convenient.."
  [Me]"I guess if there is something important, it would warrant the effort to send a three word SMS message.. 'please call me'"
  [Bill]"Eh.."

Not everyone is able to use text messages. For example, if I get a call from a business that's returning my call, they're probably calling from a land line that doesn't have texting capabilities. And a non-online business (e.g., my doctor or my car repair shop) probably doesn't have my e-mail address and/or doesn't want to deal with customers via e-mail (it's an extra communication channel that someone at the business needs to monitor).

Also, if I want someone to reply to me quickly, I'm not going to put extra hurdles in their way to make it more difficult for them to do so.

On the other hand, if I'm calling a friend's cell phone and they don't answer, I usually leave a text message instead of a voice mail since it's easier for them to deal with.

Yes, but I almost never answer the phone unless I recognize the number, and I rarely check my v/m, meaning 3/4's of the time my mailbox is full and you can't leave me a message anyway. But I've been pretty cavalier about sharing my phone number over the years, so I get a lot of robo-call crap / marketing spam, etc., and it's pretty rare that I miss anything genuinely important.

At some point I'll get a new phone number and retire this one and when I do that, I'll probably A. be more guarded about sharing the number, and B. care more about voicemail. Maybe.

I hate listening to voice messages. But my provider didn't allow it to be disabled. So my greeting says "please don't leave a message. I won't check it. Send me an email or text message instead"

Disabled, since my provider charges for it (around 0.12 € per message, but still..) and it requires setting and remembering a PIN code to access it.

I don't think it's that useful anymore in the era of WhatsApp voice messages.

I have it enabled. If I receive an unexpected call from an unknown number, I don't bother returning it unless they consider it important enough to leave a voicemail. I don't use it much, but of course there are places like doctors offices that wouldn't communicate via sms or email.

I use my land line only to place calls because of free calls to cellphones and national land numbers, but the ring is kept off 24/7. Voice mail is enabled though I'm considering disabling it since the ratio of commercial vs non commercial calls is overwhelming.

On; because my dentist's office isn't going to text me (though I usually know it's an appointment reminder). And the iPhone does pretty decent job of transcribing voicemails these days.

Disabled. I like having a little more time to answer my phone, and do not like incurring costs to the other party when I do not answer (voicemail counts as a connected call).

Enabled. Transcript by Google Voice emailed to me.

How do you set that up?

Assuming you already have a Google Voice account, go to Settings > Voicemail > Get voicemail via email

And have your mobile number forward to your Google Voice number if you don't answer.

this

I never thought about it. Thanks for the tip.

Same as you: turned on, message saying don't leave a message, email me.