I write a blog for one of my clients, and recently posted something on life lessons we’d like to teach our children – you know, the stuff they learn that isn’t in text books.
One of the lessons I try to teach Flea is ‘manners take you places’. She knows when to say please and thank you, to say ‘excuse me’ when she wants to talk to someone who’s otherwise occupied, and that sort of thing. When she gets a bit older, I’ve got a new one to add to the list: return a bloody phone call once in a while.
Seriously, the media business is all about relationships – and it’s impossible to have a fulfilling relationship with voicemail.
I must waste an hour a day trying to get people on the phone. I call editors about pitches, I call PR agencies to arrange interviews, I speak to my various corporate and PR clients … and I inevitably hit the voicemail roadblock.
I recently had a contact email me with a query. I phoned them directly because the information they wanted wasn’t straightforward – it depended whether they wanted solution A or B. The call went to voicemail. So did a second call. Neither call was returned.
Eventually, we got into an email conversation instead, which took four times as long and meant what should have been a five minute job at 10am turned into eight emails back and forth, two iterations of the project document, and the job wasn't finished until 7pm. It's annoying and inefficient - for both of us, surely?
What’s really infuriating is I knew the client was in the office the whole time, screening calls, and basically didn't pick up the phone. I do it myself and I know it's an easy trap to fall into - you're busy, there's so much information coming from all directions and voicemail seems to save you time, right? Except it doesn't - you end up wasting time with asynchronous conversations, and you lose the opportunity to build a relationship in the same way you can when you're talking to someone in real-time.
In my book, there’s an etiquette with phone calls. Just as you shouldn’t take calls at the table, and you should turn your phone off in the cinema (seriously, who are those morons whose lives are so important they can’t turn a mobile off for 90 minutes?) you should try and respond when someone wants to talk to you – even if it’s to say “Now isn’t a great time, can I call you back in 10?”
When did it become okay to adopt this notion of “I’m so busy that I simply don’t have time to deal with other people”? As I tell Flea all the time, manners are about not making life harder for other people. So why don't we try answering the phone and returning calls once in a while?
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