Telephone Etiquette 
Voicemail Greeting
Voicemail greetings can be a tremendously valuable tool for communicating with a variety of people — vendors, prospective residents, current residents, and site employe resource center employees.
- Make sure your voicemail greeting is clear and easy to understand. After recording your greeting, make sure to check it and make sure it can be easily understood by incoming callers.
- Always remember that the office telephone is just that – a business telephone line, and that the information provided should be restricted to professional, appropriate business information only.
- It’s not just a marketing aid, there are also current residents who contact the management office for a variety of reasons. Therefore, if your voicemail greeting mentions your blow-out, free rent specials being offered from now until eternity, don’t be surprised when a current resident wants to know what they need to do to have their rent reduced by half! So, it is always best to stay just a bit ‘general’ until the actual phone call with a prospective resident.
- Be sensitive about the length of the greeting as well. Greetings that last for more than 15 to 30 seconds can lose their effectiveness, as callers
will grow impatient. - Record your voicemail greeting in a cheerful, upbeat tone. We all have difficult days. If your voicemail greeting was recorded on one of those days, now is a great opportunity to re-record it in an upbeat voice.
Don’t forget to include:
→ Name of community
→ General location
→ Office hours
→ After hours emergency pager number
Email Etiquette
Email has become such a key part of our day, it’s hard to remember life without it. There is no exact right way or wrong way to use email. However, we can all be better communicators. To simplify communications to both internal and external recipients, this chapter provides guidelines and tips.
General Guidelines
First, let’s get a few basics out of the way. For some, this will be old news, for others, it will be brand spanking new.
- Threads — Don’t “break threads”. To keep a record of the conversation, keep original emails together as they travel back and forth. Responding to the email with a separate, new email will cause the original sender to search for what you’re responding to.
- Reply To All — If you are a part of a large group of people who receive an email and you “reply to all”, they all receive your email.
- No Privacy — If you wish to send private email, use your private email address. Otherwise, expect that the whole wide world gets to read your email. Yep, that includes your mother.
- Filing — Learn to electronically file the email you receive. If you just said, “what’s electronic filing?”, contact IT support for help.
- Unauthorized Use — Do not spread chain emails, inappropriate jokes, or other offensive materials. Avoid angry language — “flaming”.
- Professionalism — Proof your own emails. Avoid emoticons or “smilies” in business emails. Do not use abbreviations that are not widely understand, such as LOL and OMG.
- Text Style — Look professional. Avoid using fancy script, color, or overusing punctuation marks (!!!) in the email text. Do not use ALL CAPS unless you are being particularly emphatic. WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF YELLING AT YOUR EMAIL RECIPIENT.
Auto Signatures
The signature should be in the following format and contain the following information:
- Full Name
- Title
- Site/Location
- Address
- Phone Numbers (i.e., direct line, fax)
- E-mail address
- Website link (example: http://cresapts.com/happyapartments)
