Communication etiquette is a set of recommendations on the “well-mannered” use of means of communication (mostly in business relations).
The general rule: it’s best to communicate through the channel chosen by whoever started the conversation. If a client contacted you by email, I think you should answer the same way. If they called, we call them back.
Incidentally, it was noticed long ago that the means of communication strongly affects the manner of communication: how formal it is, how “personal”. ICQ, for example, is much more “informal” than email, even though the difference between them wouldn’t seem that big.
A trite tip for salespeople of all kinds: the more different ways a client has to reach you, the more likely they’ll find one that’s comfortable for them. And comfortable communication is the start of good cooperation.
First, I’ve made it a rule for myself to give a short reply to an email as a signal that I received it. The person at the other end of the line wants to know whether you got their message and read it. Even if you can’t answer their request or proposal right away, write that you got it and are grateful for the letter, that you’ll think it over and answer as soon as you can.
Admittedly, I don’t always follow this rule myself yet. It was especially hard to answer every résumé when we had a vacancy open.
Write to any one person from one and the same address. Otherwise they may get confused about who is where and won’t be able to follow your correspondence.
Try to fit as much information as possible into one letter. Don’t turn email correspondence into a chat.
Put your contact details (phone number) in your signature (if you want people to call you, of course; if you’re selling something, for example).
Repeat your contacts in every letter: it isn’t very convenient to dig back through the correspondence for the phone number in the first letter, especially if it has gone on for a long time and there’s a lot of it.
Don’t break email threads. Press “Reply”, not “New message”. In business correspondence it’s very handy that letters get “stacked” into threads: you can run your eye over the old messages and remember where you left off.
As far as I know, this feature was once Gmail’s revolutionary discovery. So: letters are grouped into threads only if the sender pressed “Reply” rather than writing a new letter. Personally, it really irritates me when people don’t use threads.
Collect your questions and proposals into one conversation. Again: don’t turn phone calls into a chat. Frequent calls tear the other person away from what they’re doing and annoy them. Imagine someone pestering him like that while he’s doing something important for you.
If your message doesn’t need an answer from the recipient, send a text: don’t distract the person, don’t waste their time or yours.
If a person doesn’t pick up and then doesn’t call back, stop dealing with them. Especially in business relations. Even if they later tell you how busy they were, how a tram ran them over, and so on.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a rule of etiquette, just advice. But a sound one, I think.
I’m deliberately leaving out calls in and out of working hours, the use of punctuation and smileys, CAPS LOCK and so on, since that’s probably old hat by now :)
By the way, you need to be careful with slang too. Especially in business correspondence with people whose age, social status and location differ from yours.
You don’t have to observe all these little etiquette rules, of course. Nothing terrible will happen. Hardly anyone will even notice. Unless you run into a bore like me.