What is your message when you don’t see people looking?
As a part of our job, my wife and I have been working on our financial support base. This process includes a lot of calls to people and churches that end at an answering machine or voicemail.
There is one type of outgoing message that completely baffles me, the business or church that has nothing but the standard outgoing message on their machine.
No one is available right now, please leave a brief message. *BEEP*
This is a failure really. It’s a failure to make the most of every opportunity. People call businesses and churches for two reasons:
- To talk to someone.
- To get information.
These two sometimes are the same thing, but sometimes they are not. If someone has just moved to your town they may not care to talk to anyone to get your service times, they may just want to call and find out after hours – let them.
Perhaps Nancy who lives a mile from the church recieved a phone call at 10:30 Saturday night telling her that her father has died and she finally feels the need to come back to church. You want her to be able to find that information easily.
Ultimately this comes down to thinking all the way through your communication strategy. In our society of answering machines and web-pages we are always communicating even when we don’t know we are. Your message or an invitation to hear your message should always be available because you never know when someone will come looking or calling.
An outgoing answering machine message takes 5 minutes to record – include the name, your address and when people can visit you. This is all of the information they need to visit, but they need this much or else you have failed to extend even the most basic invitation.
And the leaves people out, in the darkness.
