Voicemail Etiquette

How many times do you receive an important voicemail message and find yourself missing the all important call back phone number?  Or come to find out, the person leaving the message blows through their number so quickly that you can’t quite make it out.  Sure, receiving a digital callback number or an audio file can make life easier but we don’t live in a perfect world so you will not always have those options.  Perhaps the party’s requested number isn’t the same as the one shown on the caller ID.  Well, this happens to a lot of us–and quite often.  The solution?   Why, you simply repeat the playback of the message.  But that eats up time.  We could make it a lot easier on ourselves if we all took the advice below into consideration.

The next time you are faced with the < beep > of an answering machine, state your name, number, and then your message/question etc.  This way it’s easy to get the vital information upon playback/repeat (your name & number).  It’s sort of like dealing with exact change.  If you have it on you, giving it to the cashier makes that person only have to deal in even cash (easier for them).  We put ourselves in their shoes in that circumstance, so why not do the same when leaving a voicemail?