Nov 05 08
The 30 Second Voicemail
By Dave Imperiale
Voicemails should not be longer than 30 seconds. Whether it’s personal or professional, unless someone specifically asks you to leave instructions, you should really try not to have a conversation with yourself on someone else’s voicemail.
People often ignore my directive voicemail of “leave me a quick message.” Saying “keep your message to under 30 seconds” might be inappropriate for customers who don’t know me yet, or that’s what it would be.
One of my favorite recent examples is from an SNP colleague of mine. For purposes here, let’s call him Porter. I had written an email on a Saturday morning addressing three concerns/suggestions I had about a project. On Sunday there’s a voicemail that begins with pleasantries and then the following: “I wanted to get back to you about the concerns you had in your email yesterday. With regards to the first point you made….” That’s when I looked down at the iPhone1 voicemail meter (best feature ever) and saw that it was 3 minutes, 45 seconds long. That one was deleted before the 30 second mark. Now if it had started: “Hi Dave, I dropped my laptop down a sewer, things got romantic with my home desktop last night so that’s not working, my car was stolen, I can’t get to a computer right now to email you, so let me respond to all of the issues you had in your email….” I would have laughed, but still deleted a message that long. That kind of explanation is meant for a conversation – with two people.
The problem is people don’t think about leaving intelligent voicemails. When voicemail picks up, your brain shuts down because it’s been alerted you’re not going to have to talk to the person you called. Simply not true — especially if it’s business. If I’m calling someone really important, I usually jot down a couple of bullet points in case I get voicemail.
Here’s a format:
1. Intro: “Hey, it’s Dave.” This is often unnecessary if you know the person well – because unless it’s your grandmother with a rotary phone – they know who it is.
2. The 1-2 line purpose of your call: “I want you to know I’m sick of you leaving me lengthy voicemails that make you sound like a blathering moron.”
3. Leave your phone number with the addition: “in case it didn’t come up on your phone.”
4. Close: “Give me a call back” OR, better yet “don’t worry about calling me back.”
We’ve got more than enough mediums of communication. If your voicemail is longer than 30 seconds, it shouldn’t be a voicemail.
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1. While the iPhone was a huge step for me, I felt it was way too played to write about it. But if you have AT&T, you’re wasting your time if you don’t have one.
The actual start to the message was, “I had a bad bike accident and I can’t really type so I apologize, but I need to leave this in message format”. Your revisionist history is weak…but entertaining none the less.
you are hysterical…this is great and sooooooo true.