Your Answering Machine Said What?

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Comment by Serina Kelly on July 12, 2009 at 5:53pm

Personally, I had never really thought about it, but the first thing I did after reading this was check my own message - and felt relieved that it said nothing about "earliest convenience," because I never would have meant to offend anyone by it.

Comment by Duke Snyder on July 12, 2009 at 11:43am

Is it too early to sense a pattern these comments seem to indicate?
Common thread within these posts indicates to me, again, that maybe only 40% of our nation's population affirm that communication is 60% LISTENING and 40% SPEAKING.
This is written in preperation for a 5th consecutive day of LISTENING for several minutes to my least favorite cast of American entreprenurial robots housed within the hardcast walls of my least favorite American company , AT&T.
How did I survive all these years without social media networking and a cell phone?

Comment by David A Wachtel on July 12, 2009 at 11:22am

Comment to John Uhri:
Agreed...I have even gone to the extent of saying "Please stop and listen to this important message..." at the beginning. The reason is that people are so accustomed to voice mail they hear it, hit "1" and jump right to leaving the message never hearing your "I am on vacation" response. Then they leave a messaage expecting a return and you are gone for a week.

Comment by Barbara Jones on July 10, 2009 at 4:04pm

Thanks everyone for these excellent comments!

Barb

Comment by John Uhri on July 10, 2009 at 2:11pm

One tip I borrowed from my wife is to say "I will return your call within one business day." There is almost no valid excuse to be able to return a call within 24 hours during the week, and by end of day Monday after a weekend.

If you're on vacation and not checking voice mail, that should be in the your message.

Comment by Ellen Dunnigan on July 10, 2009 at 9:29am

We hold a class monthly on leaving voicemail messages that get results. The "earliest convenience" item has come up several times. Truly I believe those who use it do not realize what those words actually mean. In decades past, we used to hear, "please call me at your earliest convenience" -- an appropriately worded phrase for its intent. Somehow along the way, people started using those last two words as their 'outgoing' message -- misunderstanding the intent. So, in our class we clarify both the outgoing messages and the messages one might leave to generate a specific result. Good post, Barb. It's great to read everyone's thoughts!

Comment by David A Wachtel on July 10, 2009 at 9:15am

Customers hear things like this and they take it for what it is...some organizations are internally focused. It's all about how you look and sound to the client. This happened to come up when Barb and I were having breakfast and we were talking about company culture...and I began to talk about how the little things can make a huge difference. And this was one of my favorites...it's another way of saying the my time is more important than helping you, the customer that pays me, to solve a problem.

It's like the difference between customer satisfactions and customer loyalty.

Consistently successful organizations understand this. The ones that are doing well right now, even in a "difficult economy".

Comment by James Ryan on July 9, 2009 at 5:07pm

I agree 100%, Barbara. It is very condescending. I may be overly compensating on my vm message. Here's what I do:
I change my message every day, telling them my schedule for the day and when I will return calls. For example, my message to day sounds something like, "Hello, you've reached the voice mail for James Ryan. Today is Thursday, July 9, and I will be in a networking meeting first thing this morning, a lunch meeting, then a coaching call with a client from 1:30 to 3:00. Your call is important to me, so please leave me a detailed message and I will return calls between meetings or after 3:00 today."

This takes 50 seconds to 1:15 minutes every day.

Comment by John Cannon on July 9, 2009 at 12:44am

Hey Pat, Personally, I've never been offended by that phrase. At least it's better than hearing, "I'll return your call when I freakin' feel like it!" lol I mean "at my earliest convenience" simply means when I get done with what I'm so tied up with or with this meeting, I'll call you back. People are busy at work and can't always get tot he phone, I understand that, we all do, so at my earliest convenience is fine for me. I'm not offended.

Re: receptionists: i'd MUCH rather have someone answer the phone and ask, "How may I direct your call?" than get one of those pesky, irritating robots. CANNOT stand that and will NEVER use one of those for my company. Absolutely hate it.

At least the receptionist can answer questions or put you in contact w/the person who can.
--John
www.MyCarDoc.com

Comment by Duke Snyder on July 8, 2009 at 10:55pm

Good point right off the top.
And we haven't even begun on the robot answering equipment so many companies utilize.
Only one other quick point....is there any company with worse telephone etiquette than the giant AT&T itself?

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