Phone manners (semi-rant)

[nachtjaeger]

I recently started a business in my spare time. We're still using my home number as the business number until the volume of calls gets too much- why waste the money?
The problem is this: My Lady Wife answers the phone, "Hello?" Silence for a moment. Then "Uhhh- (my first name)?" Hey, her voice isn't that deep!
She responds, "No, this is his wife. May I help you?" Silence, and then "Umm. . . is (my first name) there?"
If I am at work, she says, "I'm sorry, he's not here right now- may I take a message and have him get back to you?"
One neandertal responded today "Uhh- i'll just send him some stuff in the mail." Click.
Another left his name- not his number- and said he'd send an email. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?

These are business calls, from salespeople and professionals. Whatever happened to "Hello, this is John Doe from XYZ Corp. May I please speak to Mr. John Smith?"

Am I asking too much here? Even if I'm calling a good friend, I say "Hey, Joe, it's (name)." If I get Joe's wife, I say "Hi, Jane, this is (name). Is Joe handy?"

Has anybody else had this problem?

And a note to any business folks reading this- your chances of getting my company's business are directly proportional to how polite and professional your staff is (assuming you have competition.)
And being rude and annoying to the wife of the president of the company- who is also CEO and head of R&D- is a very foolish move.

[UberGaijin]

I have noticed that people in my part of the world tend to assume that you automatically know who is calling you. The will start off all conversations with either a high level of unwarranted familiarity...or start doing something that I just call "phone drooling": odd noises, dropping the phone, mumbling something that could be "hello" in some language, or some variant of wazzup...just nowhere near as charming.

I hate talking on the phone...

[Duncan Edwards]

I get phone calls like that most days at work. It's all tied to three things; the death of literacy, courtesy, and responsibility. Hippies and television started it and now all three are in a death spiral. Nobody knows how to speak, how to interact, make a logical discussion, etc. In a similar vein, how many guys know how to shake hands nowdays? I think half of them expect me to kiss it. Yeah, I'm an old fart.

[Nessie]

The job I have now has little phone work. At my previous job, though, I was THE telephone-getter.

Peeves:

Yeah. I'm with you. Plenty of people who figured that I recognized their voices, or automatically remembered their name no matter how long ago I once talked to them! Or even if they never did talk to me at all because that other gal was there way back then! I had one dude who called three times a year for my boss. He always sounded word-slurring, falling-down drunk. I don't know who he was, or if my boss ever called him back.

People who mumble, whisper, or are confused to the point where they have no idea how to describe what they want from your company...and there must be a thousand people who transposed the 8 and the 5 and were looking for the oxygen company, not us. There was another company, too, with a name so similar to ours that I simply kept their telephone number by our telephone and re-directed their three calls a week from us right back to them. And yeah, that guy who always called on his cell while driving around doing eighty things at once and never remembered any information or had a scrap of paperwork with him..."I don't know, it's all back at my office!"

I always got the phone right away, because people don't like to wait and they don't like voice mail (unless they ask for it themselves). I didn't mind dropping my work for real customers but phone solicitors were a major pain in the you-know-where.

You always know that they don't really know your boss if they completely butcher his name, and that they have no clue about your company when they ask for departments that don't exist.

It was annoying to be interrupted with offers for stuff we were never going to buy...like sidings and gutters (hey, we rented our space...and it was not a house!) and all the auto glass people must have had our number too...and it got more annoying yet when some of these people pitched their product to me in indecipherable foreign accents. Evidently there are plenty of advertisers who don't bother to find out whether or not the person they're hiring to sell their stuff can speak in the language of the people that they are calling.

Or...this is worse...I'd pick up the phone and a recording would say, "Please hold for an important message."

KLUNK!

That's me hanging up. My boss allowed me to do that to any recording that called us and I did do it, with happiness and glee in my heart.

Hey, if the message is so bloody important, at least have it delivered by a human being!

Nessie

P.S. How to set yourself up for extra-stupid phone calls at the very last minute:

Put the word "overnight" in your company's name.

I never worked for anything named Overnight. I spent six years explaining to begging, desperate people who called two minutes before quitting time that the company had changed its name...years ago...and it did not do all its work overnight. But some online business listings were, for some reason, never updated.

If you don't actually have a night shift, Overnight is a bad word to add to your company name.

[cerberus]

My pet hate is people who start talking as soon as the ring tone stops, in other words while you are still bringing the phone to your ear. By the time you can hear them you've missed their name and why they are calling and they are well into their sales spiel. I let them finish then tell them I'm not authorised to make any purchases on our behalf (not true, but I'm not going to buy from them now). That usually gets rid of them. My boss is pretty good with salesmen, I was in his office recently when one phoned, I only heard one side of the conversation but the rest was easy to guess. After listening for a while my boss said something along the lines of "You can't possibly say you can save me 30% of my costs, you have no idea what we are using or how much we pay for it. I resent the implication that my cost management is so bad that I am paying 30% more than I need to. Goodbye".

The other thing that annoys me (OK, that's an understatement) is the way most people are slaves to their mobile and drop everything irrespective of what they are doing or who is being inconvenienced. You know the kind of thing - you're standing in the queue at the supermarket and a mobile rings, that's right it's the person at the front of the queue. They promptly stop loading their shopping into bags and wander away from the till talking to their friend, having completely forgotten about the queue of people waiting on them. I've seen people crossing the road in traffic stop in the middle to answer their phone! Also, as someone who was narrowly missed by an idiot doing a right turn into a side road (this is the UK so a right turn crosses oncoming traffic) without signalling, while driving one handed and talking on his mobile, I sincerely hope there is a special place in Hell for his kind. I've recently developed a worring habit while travelling home from work. If someone is near me tapping away on their Blackberry or whatever I tut-tut then say "that's sad, they've really got you whipped, haven't they". So far I've got away with it without being punched in the face, so I guess it's true.

[Chimerix]

I gotta come down on the other side of the coin here. If I call a business number, I expect a business greeting. "Armstrong Enterprises, Lisa speaking. How may I help you?" If I call a business and am greeted with a "Hello?" that tells me a lot of things. It tells me that I'm dealing with an unprofessional outfit. It tells me that I'm talking to someone who doesn't take their job remotely seriously. It tells me that I should go to the Yellow Pages and look for alternatives. And, it usually takes me by surprise, so my own response may not be as smooth and professional as I would like. I honestly don't know whether to backpedal or forge ahead.

If you're going to run a business, you need to act like it. Either get a dedicated phone and answer it properly, or cajole the Lady Wife into playing along for a while. This isn't their fault, it's yours.

IMHO, of course!!

[nachtjaeger]

That's the plan- as soon as we have a dedicated line, she can answer that phone properly. Going to look into internet phone service for the business.

I gotta come down on the other side of the coin here. If I call a business number, I expect a business greeting. "Armstrong Enterprises, Lisa speaking. How may I help you?" If I call a business and am greeted with a "Hello?" that tells me a lot of things. It tells me that I'm dealing with an unprofessional outfit. It tells me that I'm talking to someone who doesn't take their job remotely seriously. It tells me that I should go to the Yellow Pages and look for alternatives. And, it usually takes me by surprise, so my own response may not be as smooth and professional as I would like. I honestly don't know whether to backpedal or forge ahead.

If you're going to run a business, you need to act like it. Either get a dedicated phone and answer it properly, or cajole the Lady Wife into playing along for a while. This isn't their fault, it's yours.

IMHO, of course!!

[Nessie]

That's the plan- as soon as we have a dedicated line, she can answer that phone properly. Going to look into internet phone service for the business.

Actually, if I was in your shoes, I'd just go ahead and answer it the business way right now. If your friends and family don't understand -- foofie on 'em!

Nessie