Comments on: Communication Preferences and Jane’s Voicemail Message

By: kikibibi

kikibibi — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:39:15 +0000

P.s., my husband has 2 cell phones and a work voice mail, and a voice mail philosophy similar to Jane’s. His outgoing message “Hi this is DB. Please do not leave me a message as this voice mail box is rarely checked. Please call my office at xxx.” Then when you call his office, it says “please call my cell phone” but he doesn’t specify WHICH cell phone. People just end up emailing him in frustration!

By: kikibibi

kikibibi — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:36:14 +0000

I used to be in executive management at a large Fortune 100 insurance firm. Our CEO and others on the management team routinely used VM for vital communications. As in “Hi Kiki, On Monday, I’m speaking to Wall Street analysts and then later being interviewed live by CNBC. Please make me a presentation with the following 27 things…” and then he’d go on in detail about the 27 things. And he’d leave me this voice mail on Saturday afternoon. And I wouldn’t hear it until I got to work on Monday. And I’d be sunk! If only that’d come in via email (Blackberry), I’d have been right on top of things. Also, if I had any questions and needed immediate answers, the only way to reach him back was via his work voice mail – not like I was gonna call him at home!
It got so bad, that I was listening to my work voice mail hourly on evenings and weekends. I’d listen to messages on the way into work, and commonly had 10+ in the queue (from overnight), and the entire 45 minute drive would be spent listening to voice mail!
20+ lbs, 3 years of missing my family, and blood pressure of 200+/125+ later, I left that job behind for good! BP under control, family recognizes me now. Life is good.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:42:46 +0000

Hey this is a very original idea for me! I never listen to my voice mail, I am just not used to it and always forget to check it, I am a mess!

By: Joey Logano

Joey Logano — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:05:40 +0000

Hah, I have never heard of someone telling someone to email them. But… I have heard a friend of mine leave in his voice mail that he will probably not check it.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:02:17 +0000

nice post, i think communication preferences are an interesting topic, i know that there are so many these days, i’m better at checking some than others. I think these should be condensed, i know phones are becoming all in ones, but its not done well enough yet.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:29:54 +0000

Thanks for all your thoughts on this post. I didn’t mean to sound so negative towards Jane’s voicemail message. My tone just didn’t come across right, so I updated the post tonight.

In short, I think it’s a good idea to let others know what your communication preferences are. It’s only necessary to cater to another person’s communication preferences if you’re trying to connect most efficiently with that person (adapting yourself to their preferred medium). But often times that isn’t a high priority. Often times you’re just trying to quickly finish off an errand list and fire off other responses to various communications.

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:50:59 +0000

Also, I’ll throw out the idea of recording telephone conversations so there is a permanent record to refer to. Skype calls in particular make this easy (there are free and low-cost plugins which make this possible).

I just finished an hour long telephone conversation with an SME. Valuable information, very complex, I took good notes. Three days later, I can understand about 50% of my notes. I really wish I had recorded it. (That said, it would have taken 3+ hours for the SME to write the answers down, and they still would have been incomplete).

Part of the challenge of technical communication is that information can often be lost even if the explainer and listener are highly skilled.

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:25:14 +0000

Here’s the issue as it relates to technical writers. How should you communicate with SMEs? Sometimes having an email exchange can be very inefficient. (but if the writer has time to ask lengthy questions and needs something authoritative, then it is good).

Telephoning saves time for both listener and interviewer, but it runs the risk of the interviewer not taking good notes or remembering what was said.

Sometimes SME’s prefer email exchanges over online chat or telephone, and usually I defer, but there are times when I feel a phone conversation would save time all around. That mainly happens when I’m in exploratory mode, trying to figure out what the need is and what concepts are involved.

By: Amber @ Classic Housewife

Amber @ Classic Housewife — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:32:44 +0000

LOL! In Jane’s defense:

At least she’s being honest and up front that she doesn’t check her voicemail. She’s not alone in this, my husband is the same way (although he never thought of leaving his email address in the message.) No matter how much he tells people not to leave a message, they still do. I agree with the “typically respond in the same format” suggestion, but what about respecting the other person’s preferences? Some people don’t like to receive text messages because it’s not a part of their plan and it costs money. Some people don’t like voicemails because they recognize they’re not good at listening to them in a timely manner (and also, listening to them uses minutes.) So what to do then?

By: Jan Gerston

Jan Gerston — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:13:35 +0000

Tom, Love your blog, where I have been lurking since I found it. It’s my first source for technology updates. Only to another technical editor would I bother making the following correction.

People often ask me the most commonly misspelled word in the English language. Empirically speaking, it is accommodate or accommodations. Maybe check your last paragraph?

Jan (the stickler)