Telephone Manners Worldwide - and my business training

Announcing Numbers When Answering

In the early days of the phone, you always answered with your phone number. After WW2 a number in the UK was the name of the exchange, then only four digits. that was easy to remember and quick to say.

Many people consider it polite to say the phone number. This saves the caller from spending time explaining their problem to the wrong number, wrong extension, wrong person.

If you meet an elderly person, in their seventies or eighties or nineties, (writing in 2019) in the UK, they will probably be able to remember their first phone numbers. Their childhood or first home household numbers from the good old days of short numbers, constantly repeated.

Longer Numbers

Then along came longer numbers. Harder to remember. International numbers with two or three digit country codes at the start. Ten digits for mobile phones.

I asked a cleaner for his number. He could not remember it. First we wrote his number on his phone so he could read it off when speaking to somebody else.

Then we practised the number. I broke it down into pairs of numbers. I asked his house number, his age, his birthdate. His lucky number. His children's ages. His wife's age and birthdate. His mother's birthday. The age at which he could retire.A date he knew well such as 1066, 1492, 1812.Memory aids for single numbers. I won one. Two for tea. Threes a crowd. family of four. Beethoven's Fifth. Six, pick up sticks. Seven days of the week. 8 don't be late. Nine feeling fine. Ten a big fat hen. Legs eleven. 12 baker's dozen. Unlucky 13. Sweet 16. 18 come of age. Life begins at 40. 67 at sixes and sevens. I can retire at 60/65/70/75. 70 - is three score years and ten. Numbers in a football or rugby team.

I soon found something memorable, using numbers he already knew well, to recall the first pair of numbers. I looked for numbers which were multiples of the first pair, or repeated one of the first two digits. We soon found easy ways for him to remember his own number. I made him write it down. Than say it to me three times.

Safety & Privacy Concern

As time moved on, then families became smaller, with young women living alone, and single mothers. Single women received nuisance calls.

Hello? Who's Speaking?

They were advised to be more circumspect. They stopped revealing their name or number and started saying merely, 'hello?'

Over in Singapore, where Chinese speakers are used to short, succinct sentences, the opening, Hello, when you are ringing a big company, is annoying to British, Australian and New Zealand customers.

Correctly Pronouncing Company Names

If the phone operator or employee can't pronounce the company name, sometimes they might prefer not to say it. At HOD toastmasters in London I met a man from Thailand who was trying to improve his English by attending a Toastmasters Club of which he was a member. (You can attend and listen at many public clubs for free. Priority on the programme is given to members, so if you want to practise presentations or speeches you need to find a nearby club, or one which is welcoming, and join it.) he was also learning pronunciation at a class at City Lit in central London.

He told me that he worked for the Loyal Bank of Scotland.

I assumed the company, Royal Bank of Scotland, which at that time had bad publicity in the papers, had changed its name. Half an hour later, hearing him mispronounce other words, I realized he was working for the Royal Bank of Scotland. No change in the name.

So the first task of a company or employee is to be able to say the company name.

You can hear your British and Commonwealth colleagues covering the phone and muttering to themselves or you, "For heavens' sake - why don't they say the company name!"

Polite Phrases

One way to open politely is, How can I help you?

A switchboard operator should announce that they are the switchboard, and ask if the caller knows which department they need. That saves the caller from launching their problem wasting the switchboard operator's time, and having to repeat the problem all over again. If their are only two or three options available the operator could give the choices, such as, this is the switchboard, do you need service or spares?

If possible, if the extension is playing music, or not answering, the caller should be put through to the boss or secretary for the department to take a message, or the switchboard operator could record a message in handwriting or voice recording.

Better Business English Workshops By Angela Lansbury

I presented Better Business English again to a Toastmasters International speakers' club group. We did the interactive telephone task, in pairs, pretending to be a phone operator answering callers, and a customer. The fluent English speakers immediately grasped the purpose of the exercise, to speak good English on the phone, and speak clearly and be polite and helpful.

What was not clear to them was whether to do one conversation in four minutes or whether to swap roles? If I had wanted them to swap roles, I should have rung the bell after two minutes.

I have done this workshop to several groups in Singapore and the UK. If you know a company which would like staff training, I am repeating and improving my business training so that I can sell my services. I am a native English speaker and lifelong student of NLP (positive thinking in a systematic fashion). I'm improving my interactive tasks at Toastmasters International. Any clubs wanting a workshop, please contact me.

Tips

1 Practise pronouncing company names correctly.

2 Speak slowly and clearly when answering the phone.

3 Say your name clearly. Spell it.

4 Learn the local ways of answering the phone.

(For example, Japanese mushi mushi).

But teach local employees how to answer all kinds of foreign callers.

5 When speaking in public, in restaurants and on trains, lower your voice. That way you do not disturb others nearby. You do no reveal company secrets to bystanders.

6 On mobile phones, turn off sound on phones when in bathrooms and toilets. Even if others cannot see you, they can hear toilets flushing.

7 Turn off sound at night. Do not complain when others call you at night their time. If possible, learn to give an outgoing message saying in how many minutes or hours you will return calls.

8 Do not reveal that your home is empty, when working from home.

9 Do not reveal that the company is closed. That might attract thieves. Or send buyers to another company. Simply say that you are away from your desk.

10 If possible, give an emergency number or email. Or an alternative way of ordering. Have an emergency number for when the main phone has a long wait time or does not work.

Check that your outgoing message does not refer callers to a website which is not monitored but simply refers the reader back to the phone number.

11 If you are busy, and want to get straight to the point without chatting, and how are you, you can open with the company, and location or branch eg This is Woolworths Head Office. My name is (eg Michael / Maria.. .Department (eg Customer service)..How can I help you?

12 Smiling makes your lips wider so even though the other person cannot see you smiling, you sound happy and ready to help.
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Useful websites

https://www.wikihow.com/Answer-the-Phone-Politely
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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