Jun 15 2007
How To Leave A Phone Message
This is a public service announcement.
Ms. Q has observed one too many times the frustration of friends and coworkers who have had to deal with vague voicemails.
If you’re unsure of what a vague voicemail is, here are some examples:
- “I can’t make my appointment. I’ll call you later to reschedule.”
- “Hi! This is Jeff. I’d like to go ahead and place that order we talked about.”
- “I just called to confirm! See ya there!”
If you see no problem with the above examples, here is what is missing about each:
- Who is calling? It’s not like the caller is the only person you know. When is the appointment? Today? Tomorrow?
- Which Jeff? You may know more than one. Details! What was in the order? Where’s that phone number?
- Who is this? What was the plan? Where are we meeting? *&^%#!!
Don’t depend on the technology!
Not everyone has phones or answering machines with the latest features like Caller ID or date and time stamps.
The following instructions are for the mutual benefit of caller and callee.
Leave a good message and maybe you’ll get what you ordered and you’re not charged for the appointment you thought you cancelled.
Hear a good message and you might place that order in time for today’s shipment or reschedule someone else in the open timeslot.
Four Basic Steps For Leaving A Phone Message
- State your name: This is Ms. Q
- State the date and time: It’s Friday June 15 and I’m calling around 1:30pm
- Leave your message. Be specific. Don’t use: There, That, It, Her, and Him.
- Leave your phone number. Say it slowly. Repeat.
Example of a good phone message:
- Hi, this is Ms. Q
- It’s Friday June 15 and I’m calling around 1:30pm.
- I’d like to cancel today’s three-o’clock appointment and if possible, reschedule it for next Friday, the same time. Please call me to confirm the cancellation.
- I can be reached at: 406-555-1212. Again, I can be reached at 4-0-6…5-5-5..1-2-1-2.
This is the end of the Public Service Announcement.
Ms. Q: Making The World A Better Place, One Post At A Time
UPDATE: SHARE YOUR STORY!
Has anyone left you a vague message that totally inconvenienced you? Or them?
Maybe you want to vent?
What do you do when you receive vague phone messages? Do you make an effort to figure out who called or do you fuhgettaboutit?
Post your story and I’ll link to it!
Yes. You truly are making the world a better place one post at a time.
I get a lot of phone calls at work that say that. Hi, call me. Who are you? Why should I call you?
This is when you don’t get a call back. I think I have a post to write that will relate to this. Thx for the inspiration.
UT
UT: My last line was a bit tongue-in-cheek and more of a goal and hope! Thanks for believing that I’m accomplishing it!
I look forward to reading your post about phone-message woes. I am sure it will be delivered in what I think of as your straight-up and sometimes sly style. You gave ME an idea – I’m going to update this post a bit and ask for people’s bad phone message stories. When you write yours, I’ll link to it!
I used to get many vauge messages at my last job and it was because these idiots didn’t know what they were talking about and then they would yell at me as if I did something wrong. Don’t get me started on this.
Ricardo: But I want you to UNLOAD!
Then again, it’s the weekend….omm…ommmm… happy thoughts….happy thoughts….
Side note: I’ve been listening to Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” CD – all because you had a video of that song on your site!
The ones I love are for someone else.
There’s the actual call too that goes like this:
“Is Joe there?”
“No, this is my cell phone, and I’m not Joe.”
“Are you sure?”
wtf? “No Joe. Bye!”
My parents number is a transposition of Wal-Mart pharmacy. They’re outgoing message used mention that they were not Wal-Mart. It didn’t matter. People left messages anyway. The fun part was when we were out all day and someone called back a second time, irate that no one had returned their original call.
On a constructive note, another thing to consider is spitting out your phone number pretty early in the message. This allows people to play back your message from the beginning and catch the phone number without having to go through the entire message.
“Hi! This is ack. It’s about 4:40 PM on friday june 15th. I’d like to cancel my appointment tomorrow for 3:30. As for rescheduling, I’m not sure when you have available, or exactly what’s open on my calendar. Anyway, call me back at 888-426-5375 (888-IAM-JERK).”
That’s from my days in Technical Support long, long ago, and far, far away.
ack: that’s a great idea to leave the phone number in the beginning as well. I just try to identify myself right away.
I noticed that most business people are used to leaving accurate messages. That is, people who are in sales or management or that kind of thing. They like specific messages so tend to leave specific messages.
Another thing people don’t realize is that while they may have a distinctive voice, this doesn’t mean that it comes across in a recording; the sound quality may be bad.
Yeah, your example about your parents just goes to show you how poorly people listen. I’m sure they heard, “blah-blah-blah-wal-mart-blah beeeep!” and then they did their spiel.
And of COURSE if you were to point out their mistake, they would blame YOU for the transposition!
Even with cell phones, notoriously vague messages are obnoxious. I get a lot of “Hi, it’s me, call me back.” messages…. Those are annoying!
My favorite is something I’m still puzzling over. A few days ago, from a local number that I didn’t recognize, I received the following text message:
“Wish u were here! Keep July 22 & 23 open and we wil get u to the next one!”
……?
I’m not exactly sure where I was supposed to be, or what I was supposed to be doing, or where I’m being taken to.
I am enjoying your blog!!! Thanks for stopping by on mine so I could discover you
You know, if you don’t actually listen to your voice mail messages then you don’t have these problems.
I’d say “KIDDING!!!!!!” but I actually DO avoid listening to them. 
Also I TOTALLY agree with the putting the phone number FIRST in the message, ’cause in those rare times I do actually press the play button on my answering machine, I certainly don’t want to have to listen to the message TWICE!!!!!!! Of course, saying it slowly enough sort of solves the problem IF the person happens to have a pen or pencil handy…
Jill: Good point about not having to play a message twice to get the phone number. I will try saying the phone number slowly at the beginning AND at the end – sounds like an improvement!