陈豪在北京的ABC美国公司工作,他的美国同事Amy来找他谈事儿。

(Office ambience)

A:Hi Chen Hao, have you got a minute?

C:Amy, 刚才你过来的时候,我正在电话上。

A:It’s not polite to hang around when someone is the phone so I decided to come back.

C:嗨,别提了。我刚才一直在电话上等。想挂,可是好不容易才打通,挂了又得从头来,我就在那儿傻等着,烦死了。

A:I know what you mean. Putting callers on hold for more than thirty seconds is bad for customer relations.

C:半分钟,别说半分钟;我刚才足足等了半小时。不过,Amy, 说实话,我让别人等的时候,有时候也容易把时间忘了。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:就是这么回事。在电话上等,确实觉得时间过得特别慢,所以越等越不耐烦。

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:没错,一般情况下,我都会让客户在电话上等着别挂,我马上设法帮他们解决问题。

A:There is a difference in holding for someone to answer the phone and holding for someone to look up information for you.

C:在线上等别人接你的电话和等别人去帮你查资料有什么不一样呢?

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:我怎么还是不明白?

A:People are happy to wait while you work on their behalf.

C:噢,他们知道对方是在为自己解决问题,所以等得心甘情愿。那些等着别人接听电话的人呢?

A:When you take your time getting to the call, the caller starts to imagine all sorts of scenarios.

C:没错,我就经常怀疑对方是把我给忘了。

A:The caller may suspect you don’t think the caller is important.

C:还有呢?

A:Maybe you don’t value the caller’s time?

C:对呀,在线上等电话是越等越急,越急就容易胡思乱想。

A:Yes, and the result is that your caller is pretty annoyed when you finally answer the phone.

C:没错,那客户肯定很不高兴,觉得我没有礼貌。

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:如果没办法马上接电话,我通常都会让秘书请客户决定,是在线上继续等,还是在电话信箱里留言。

A:Exactly, good business etiquette as usual is to be considerate of the other person.