陳豪在北京的ABC美國公司工作,他的美國同事Amy來找他談事兒。 (Office ambience) A:Hi Chen Hao, have you got a minute? C:Amy, 剛才你過來的時候,我正在電話上。 A:It's not polite to hang around when someone is the phone so I decided to come back. C:嗨,別提了。我剛才一直在電話上等。想掛,可是好不容易才打通,掛了又得從頭來,我就在那兒傻等著,煩死了。 A:I know what you mean. Putting callers on hold for more than thirty seconds is bad for customer relations. C:半分鐘,別說半分鐘;我剛才足足等了半小時。不過,Amy, 說實話,我讓別人等的時候,有時候也容易把時間忘了。What can I do? A:Watch the clock. Time passes quickly for the person who is busy with other callers or issues, but for the person on hold, time creeps by. C:就是這么回事。在電話上等,確實覺得時間過得特別慢,所以越等越不耐煩。 A:Since your job doesn't involve answering other people's calls, I would guess that your callers are waiting for you to look up information while they hold. C:沒錯,一般情況下,我都會讓客戶在電話上等著別掛,我馬上設法幫他們解決問題。 A:There is a difference in holding for someone to answer the phone and holding for someone to look up information for you. C:在線上等別人接你的電話和等別人去幫你查資料有什么不一樣呢? A:If you ask people to hold while you are looking up information or trying to help them in some way, they are willing to wait. C:我怎么還是不明白? A:People are happy to wait while you work on their behalf. C:噢,他們知道對方是在為自己解決問題,所以等得心甘情愿。那些等著別人接聽電話的人呢? A:When you take your time getting to the call, the caller starts to imagine all sorts of scenarios. C:沒錯,我就經(jīng)常懷疑對方是把我給忘了。 A:The caller may suspect you don't think the caller is important. C:還有呢? A:Maybe you don't value the caller's time? C:對呀,在線上等電話是越等越急,越急就容易胡思亂想。 A:Yes, and the result is that your caller is pretty annoyed when you finally answer the phone. C:沒錯,那客戶肯定很不高興,覺得我沒有禮貌。 A:Exactly. So if you want to avoid making people feel unimportant or ignored, pick up your phone as soon as you know you have a caller waiting. C:如果沒辦法馬上接電話,我通常都會讓秘書請客戶決定,是在線上繼續(xù)等,還是在電話信箱里留言。 A:Exactly, good business etiquette as usual is to be considerate of the other person.