How to Leave a Voice Mail Message

Like a lot of people, I rely on voice mail a lot. Most of my sales are handled via online transactions with no assistance on my part. Most of my support issues are handled via email. But with a global customer base, I can’t always be there to answer the phone when a customer does call for sales or support issues.

The problem is, a lot of people think that leaving their phone number is a speed race. Strangely, the worst offenders are sales people.  I’m guilty of it too. You leave a message in nice clear English, but when it comes to the phone number it, you spit it out as fast as you can: 503-201-ze-za-zo-ze. Huh?

The worst thing is, most people wait until the end of the message to leave the number. So if you miss it the first time, you need to re-listen to the entire message to catch it. I’ve had several messages like this in the last month, and no matter how many times I’ve replayed them, I still can’t make out the number.

I’m not trying to be rude, because I appreciate getting calls from customers. I really do want to call people back, and, like I said above, I’ve been guilty of this too. To resolve this, I propose a standard format for leaving voice mail messages:

“Hi, my name is {YOUR NAME}”
“I’m with {YOUR COMPANY / ORGANIZATION}” (Optional)
“My phone number is {YOUR NUMBER}.” (S-L-O-W-L-Y and clearly!)
“My email address is {YOUR EMAIL}” (optional but recommended)
{MESSAGE}
“Again that’s {YOUR NAME} at {YOUR NUMBER} or {YOUR EMAIL}”

Now, if you leave someone a message, they get the most important information - your name and number and email - at the top of the voice mail. If they miss it the first time, it’s repeated at the end. And if they still didn’t get it, they don’t need to repeat the whole message - just the first part.