Leaving Telephone Messages

Am I allowed to have a moan? Of course I can … it’s my Blog!

I’m tutor to almost 40 students at the moment, on 2 OU courses – M150, Data Computing and Information and Y159, Understanding Management. These two courses have both started quite recently which means a lot of people want to talk to me – that’s great, always happy to talk to people. However, it seems to me that recently I’ve been left more of those unhelpful messages which just say “can you call me back”.

If people would leave messages saying what they want, then I can actually look up what’s needed and then call back with the answer, rather than calling back, finding out what’s needed then going away, looking it up and finally calling back with the answer. Now I don’t mind really, but it is annoying when I’m playing phone tag with a number of students at once and I don’t know how important it is to get back to the person.

So, 3 top tips on leaving a message for someone:

• Leave your name. Yes really, I’ve had two messages recently from telephone numbers that I don’t recognise, where a message has been left, but I don’t know WHO left the message.
• Include some details about why you’re calling. A message that tells me a bit about how I can help can save us both a lot of time – it may be that I can ask the best person to contact you directly; it may be that I can find out all the information and send it in an email; it may be that I’m not who you think I am!
• Do give an indication of the urgency and importance. Explaining why it’s urgent and/or important will help me to understand your position too.

Oh – and it’s not just students! (You know who you are…)

I suppose it’s basic etiquette really. I’ll have to ask Angela Marshall, Etiquette Expert for her view.