three checklists for office communication.
by jassen bowman
communicating with your clients and prospects is more important than ever.
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use the following checklists to verify that your phone system and website are up and functioning properly each day.
update voicemail message checklist
one of the ways that i communicate with my clients and prospects is to update my voicemail message each day and share any schedule issues that will result in my clients not being able to contact me for a period of time throughout the day.
i use personally google voice as my main number, and have it ring both to my home office number and my mobile number. i have my mobile phone number blocked so that everyone must always call on my google voice number so it rings on both.
- using one of the scripts below as a model, update the outgoing voicemail message for today using the format “may 15,” etc.
- delete the outgoing voicemail message for yesterday so that we don’t have a huge list of old outgoing voicemail messages.
weekday voicemail message template
while it can vary a little bit from day to day, the following is a template for my daily voicemail message. remember, before recording … high energy!
good morning … this is jassen bowman and today is wednesday the 15th of august. if you’re getting this message i am either on the phone or in an appointment right now, but your call is very important to me. please leave a detailed message for me after the tone. i will return your call as soon as it is convenient for me to do so. thank you and i look forward to speaking with you soon.
appointments in the morning
good morning … this is jassen bowman and today is wednesday the 15th of august. if you’re getting this message i am either on the phone or in an appointment right now, but your call is very important to me. i have appointments this morning until approximately 2:30 p.m. and will be largely unable to take calls during that time. please leave a detailed message for me after the tone. i will return your call as soon as it is convenient for me to do so. thank you and i look forward to speaking with you soon.
appointments throughout entire day
good morning … this is jassen bowman and today is wednesday the 15th of august. if you’re getting this message i am either on the phone or at an appointment right now, but your call is very important to me. i have appointments scheduled throughout the entire day today and will be largely unable to take calls during that time. please leave a detailed message for me after the tone. i will return your call as soon as it is convenient for me to do so. thank you and i look forward to speaking with you soon.
early weekend
the following is a template for my voicemail message if i am taking an early weekend and unable to return calls until monday:
good morning … this is jassen bowman and today is wednesday the 15th of august. if you’re getting this message i am either on the phone or at an appointment right now, but your call is very important to me. please leave a detailed message for me after the tone. i will return your call as soon as it is convenient for me to do so. i will be out of the office and unable to take calls on friday the 16th of august and saturday the 17th of august. so if you leave me a message now, the earliest i’d be able to return your call would be monday the 19th of august. i will be checking voicemail at least once per day for emergencies. thank you and i look forward to speaking with you soon.
thanksgiving holiday
the following is a template for my voicemail message for thanksgiving where i will not be back in until monday (assuming this is thanksgiving week):
good morning and happy thanksgiving … this is jassen bowman. i am out of the office spending time with my family for thanksgiving but your call is very important to me. please leave a detailed message for me after the tone. i will return your call on monday the __________. i will be checking voicemail at least once over the holiday weekend for emergencies. thank you and i look forward to speaking with you after the holiday. have a great thanksgiving!
alternatives
- some practitioners prefer to keep a standard voicemail message instead of updating it daily.
- some practitioners prefer to use a voicemail message that discusses referrals to remind callers that they prefer to work with referrals.
verify 24-hour recorded information line checklist
i’ve said it many times before but it is as true today as it ever was: there are few things more frustrating than to spend money – in some cases a lot of money – on marketing only to find out that your 24-hour recorded information line is not set up correctly or is down completely.
that’s why, as part of your daily marketing checklist, i encourage you to take just a minute and verify your 24-hour recorded message line is up and working. this is in addition to the verifying it is working before you put the number on any marketing pieces you create or put out.
- just make a call to your 24-hour recorded information line and make sure it is working.
- if you have ongoing marketing out that uses extensions for tracking purposes, you want to verify those particular extensions, and this is a good time to do that.
verify website checklist
before you continue to do marketing to promote your website, i strongly suggest that you check to make sure your website is up and running.
- checking your website should be done whenever new advertising is put out (that’s daily) or at least once per week. i strongly recommend daily.
- in addition to manually checking, i recommend you also sign up for a service like pingdom that will automatically check the availability of your website every five minutes and notify you if the server goes down.
- also be sure to check that your lead capture system, such as your email opt-in form on your website, is functioning properly by actually entering a test email address and testing.
important note: pingdom and manually checking your website check two different things. pingdom checks to see if your website is up and responding. it will not tell you if your content is messed up or your website is showing someone else’s website because of an error somewhere.