Conventional voicemail systems receive, store and provide voicemail messages for subscribers of the voicemail service. A “subscriber” is typically a person that has a relationship with the provider of the voicemail service. For example, the voicemail service may be provided by the local telephone company through which the subscriber receives local telephone service.
A problem with conventional voicemail services occurs when a subscriber wishes to retrieve his/her messages. For example, when a subscriber wishes to retrieve his/her messages, the subscriber typically calls a telephone number associated with the voicemail service and retrieves each message in the order in which the messages were stored. Therefore, the subscriber must listen to at least a portion of each message to determine who has left the message. Such a retrieval system is time consuming when a large number of messages have been stored.