(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.