Voice Mail Mission
By Steve Hackett on 16 Nov 2006 at 08:00 am
Please join me. I am begging you to join me. For all you business professionals that have suffered the dreaded voicemail message where one or all of the following have happened:
No name on the message
Incomplete or partial phone numbers
Impossible-to-understand messages
No company name
Or
Ready for the real nightmare? The person who says his/her name so fast that you don’t have a clue and leaves their return number even FASTER! You replay the message multiple times, ask coworkers to listen, switch ears because maybe you think your hearing is going. No matter what you do, it doesn’t work. And you feel your blood pressure rising (maybe not you, but I sure do.)
People, please slow down. Repeat your number slowly. Pretend to be writing it down as you say it. Please repeat your name and number TWICE!
My name is ____. My phone number is ___. Repeat
Here is my personal mission. I promise to leave clean, clear voicemail messages. I vow to repeat my name and phone number twice. And every time I receive a PROFESSIONAL voicemail where I can identify the caller and the return phone number on the first attempt, I will thank them for their professionalism.
My goal is to spread the gospel of the professional voicemail message and make the world better for all mankind!
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Yes, great advice, especially about leaving your name and number clearly. Some people manage to enunciate their phone number in four unintelligible syllables.
On the flip side, and not confined to business calls, before leaving a message, listen to the damn greeting and make sure you’ve reached the number you intended to call.
I get at least a few calls a year with messages like: “Aunt Janie is in the hospital and we’re heading to Greenville now. I don’t think you have our cell phone number, it’s 555-1234. Call us and we’ll give you more details.” All this and I don’t have an Aunt Janie. So some poor slob isn’t going to know about his sick aunt.
In this particular sick aunt case, a real call, I called the cell phone number to tell them that they hadn’t reached the person they thought they had, but usually, I just delete the message. So if you hear, “Hi, this is John at 555-1234 and you were trying to reach Mary at 555-4321, don’t be a moron, hang up and redial.