Phone Etiquette -3- Voice Mail

I really don’t understand this one.  Perhaps someone who is a couple of decades younger than I am can explain it to me.  Leave something in the comments if you can!

We ask our patients to leave us a number that we can call.  This number is to give them lab results, remind them of appointments, call them if we have to reschedule or for any other reason that we need to contact them.  Often this will go to “voice mail”. 

Personally, I’m not fond of voice mail.  I leave messages, but tend to get confused when talking to machines.  I know you young folks are better at it than I am.  However …..every message we left the day before Thanksgiving for the Monday after Thanksgiving was lost or “not received”.  Every single patient called about their appointment.  Princess called every patient on the schedule. 

Excuses included “my phone was turned off”, “my kids use the phone and delete my messages”, and a couple of other things.  They also had appointment cards from their previous appointments.  We were accused of not calling.  We were closed on Friday.  So were most of the rest of the business world except the retail stores.   Our patients know we don’t do “robo-calls”.

I just don’t get it.

Phone Etiquette – 1 “Blocked Number”

I think I understand the idea of blocked phone numbers.  People don’t want the person on the other end of the phone to be able to call them back.  Maybe they are calling from the back line of a doctor’s office.  Maybe it’s a personal cell phone.  I’m really not sure who they are. 

If you call my personal cell phone from a blocked number, be prepared to be ignored.  If your phone does not at least have a number I can identify, I surely am not going to pick up the call or call you back.  I may be an old fart, but I want to be able to identify the person I am talking to.  I don’t think this is covered in the etiquette books, but it probably should be.