I play a lot of voicemail tag. I leave a message on someone's voicemail. That person calls me back, but I'm on the phone or out of the office. I call her back, and this goes on interminably.
There are phones and phone systems that allow the caller upon getting a busy signal to push a button so that when the person on the other end is off the phone both sides get called and linked.
A big problem with voicemail is that this function is missing.
Why not have a voicemail function calls both sides when one - or both - are off the phone?
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I once used to autocallback feature when a colleague was busy on the phone and by the time he was done, I was out to lunch. As a result, when he was called back, he picked up the phone only to hear my voicemail. His message was quite amusing -- apparantly, I was too busy to call him, so that I had my voicemail call him.
Barry Nalebuff makes a good point. Why not be able to add a time limit for the call back to work. E.g., I'll be around for 20 minutes. The call back feature turns off after that.
This feature can pretty easily be done (my company's product can do it). However, there 2 major problems with "camping on" to a phone after getting a busy signal from voice mail: 1) Most business phones (and residential phones) now have call waiting and voicemail so you ALWAYS get though and almost never get a busy signal (only my grandmother still has a busy signal); 2) usually for this feature to work easily you need to be on the same phone system (usually an internal business function).
A better way to do this service today would be to use "phone presence" (e.g., I know that you are on the phone talking) so that the camp on does not go to voice mail but waits until the person is off the phone. Another way to solve this problem would be instead of waiting to call to send an instant message (Call from 203.xxx.xxxx is camped for you to get off the phone) giving the called party the option to get off the phone to speak with the person trying to reach them. They could even click on the instant message and call the user back using their calling ID when ready.
Scott