Intuition Tool: Out of Office Messages

In these days between holidays it may be hard to communicate with coworkers and customers as many are taking vacation or work for companies that shut down during this week. Ever feel like no one is returning your calls or emails?

You can intuit a lot about a person by observing how they use their communication tools. If it's a scheduled vacation but you receive no out of office responder messages by voicemail, email, IM or even a blog post that indicates time away you can figure the person is uncomfortable with these communication tools. If you get one type of Out of Office message but not another it may be a clue as to which communication channel they value most. i.e. Email vs. Voicemail. If you consistently experience timely voicemail message updates, email auto-responders, IM away messages, and even blog schedule notices you can bet that you are dealing with a tech savvy customer who is ready to subscribe to your email newsletter or the RSS feed for your corporate blog.