I honestly don’t expect anyone reading this to be affected by the policies I set forth, but then one of the things I’ve noticed quite frequently is that people who are affected by policies all to often don’t know that the policy exists in the first place.
I’ve instituted a three strikes policy with respect to callers leaving voice mail.
For the past few years all calls to my home number have been simultaneously ringing my cell phone. I’ve done that because while I am more than happy to pick up the phone at home, I figure if someone is calling me there then it just may be important enough that if I am away from home I should probably take the call there as well.
I work ‘odd hours’ which means that a lot of the hours that people want to talk to me, I am either asleep or at work. That doesn’t detract from the importance of calls, but it may mean that I will be in no mood to talk to someone at 1 in the afternoon, any more than they would be interested in talking to me at 1 in the morning.
Because the possibility exists that a family emergency may crop up that needs my attention, I use caller ID to see who calls are from. The system I use also announces via a text to speech capability who is calling. It’s actually interesting to try to puzzle out who the text to speech program was announcing at times. Often it sounds nothing like what the person’s name is.
I’m not a big fan of getting on the phone to just talk. A few friends can attest to the fact that I don’t randomly call people, and I don’t always respond to a voice mail that does not leave a sense of urgency in my mind.
For some reason of late I’ve been getting calls from ‘phone numbers’ rather than people or businesses. Sorry, your call will roll to voice mail. In fact most calls I receive will go to voice mail, but if you block caller-id, or have set up numbers from your business so that no company name is provided, it’s pretty much a certainty. I will happily review and as appropriate respond to voice mail from you, but even if you are going to gift me something more valuable than the net worth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, I won’t take your call directly.
That leads to the second problem. A number of people are not leaving messages. That’s fine. I figure it’s because they are telemarketers, or possibly pollsters. Perhaps it’s someone who just needs to hear from a human voice though. that’s fine, there are other people around who will very likely take up those calls. In any case it’s clear that getting me to call back was not of any significant importance to them.
My cell phone does have a log of the calls that have come in, and as I add numbers to my list of contacts, if there was no caller ID to begin with, it gets tagged with a caller-ID. Calls from people in my contact list are handled under rules defined within the contact.
So here is the three strikes policy. You have three chances to call my number and leave me a voice mail from a ‘phone number.’ If I don’t get a message that I can understand as one or more of those three calls, I will add your number to a currently very small list of numbers that rolls directly to voice mail.
Now there may be other reasons that a call rolls directly to voice mail. If my cell phone has a dead battery, or I am out of service (say I’m at work) the call will roll directly to my voice mail as well. And as noted above there are a lot of reasons that a call may end up in voice mail, even after ringing my phones.
I figure that people who end up in voice mail where the system says ‘The person you are calling is unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone.’ can figure out that they need to leave me a message. I may modify the message though, it might be a good idea to let some people know that failing to leave a message is telling me that their call is of no importance to me.
A reasonable message will consist of who is calling by first and last name, if they are calling representing a business then the business information is additional and not a substitute for a first and last name. A brief explanation of the nature of the call, and a number I can call back if I need to follow up with someone. If there is a reason that the call should be between certain hours, then include the hours that someone will be available to take my call.
The voice mail system I use does let me know that I have a message via an e-mail, and I can get that message almost any time of the day or night. I don’t get, or want transcriptions of my voice mail, though the service can provide that as an added cost item. I won’t give logic behind not using a transcription service, beyond saying that I don’t think I really need it at this time.
First and last names for people working at a business do not need to be the actual first or last name of that person. They do however need to be something that when calling back will get me to the person who called, or possibly to someone who can address the item being called about. I’m not interested in calling someone at home for a business issue. There are other reasonable reasons not to leave me an actual first and last name, and I respect them.
We’ll see if that helps.
