These are some practical guidelines for telephone courtesy that you should know about. They seem to work very well. Some come from our company, some from myself.

• Answering machines have a purpose. They are there to answer when I either can’t or won’t. Calling five times in a row and every time getting the answering machine – yet without leaving a message – is discourteous, if not downright annoying; and it prevents me from screening calls. Americans seem to understand the finer points of leaving messages – Swedes generally don’t.
• Leave short messages. When I listen to messages on my machine, I don’t want to wade through a five-minute essay. Keep it short and sweet, saying what you want and give me a phone number to call.
• And that goes for the answering machines too, by the way. Short and sweet. I’m a busy person.
• It’s also good practice to reply to sms’s with a simple “ok” or “thank you”. So the recipient knows you’ve seen the message. Otherwise the whole communication is kind of in a limbo.
• If you revoke my call on the cell phone by clicking it away, call me back as soon as you can. Actively refusing a call on the cell phone is a rather rude behavior, but it’s okay if the generally accepted meaning is “I saw your call, can’t answer now, but I’ll call you back ASAP.”

The last rule is heavily enforced at my company. If you refuse a call and don’t call back later, you will hear about it.