leaving messages

When leaving a phone message for someone, don’t just call and leave your details. Take these two extra steps and you’ll double your callbacks.

Find out
1. when they’ll get your message, and

2. when they should “be able” to get back to you.

If you just leave your message and details and then hang up, you’re no further forward. You have no feedback, no further knowledge, no outcome. You’ve just left a message. But, try this, a couple of things are likely to happen.

1. you’ll know when to call them back, and
2. the person that took the message will say to the debtor “They wanted to know when you’d get in and when you’d be calling them back.”

Most people just call and leave their message. But, before you think that the second question is a bit of overkill, let me tell you about this call.
Me: “Great. Thanks. When do you think she’ll get my call?”
Message Taker: “Oh, she’ll get it this afternoon.”

Logic dictates, then, that she should be able to return my call in a day or two doesn’t it? But, no. I practice what I preach so I asked the next question which was “Thanks. When do you think she’ll be able to get back to me?” I was stunned by the answer. “Oh, not for about two weeks.” (It turned out that the debtor was overseas. She was in hospital in Bangkok. She’d been hit by an elephant! That, believe it or not, is a true story.)

Anyway, by asking those two extra questions, I found out more about the real situation than I would have done if I’d just left a message and hung up. So, as Mitsubishi say in their TV ads, “Please consider”.