商務禮節美語第106期:禮貌請求客人等待
Politely Placing Callers On Hold
禮貌請求客人等待
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,我就在那兒傻等着,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,別説半分鐘;我剛才足足等了半小時。不過,Amy, 説實話,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: 就是這麼回事。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,我都會讓客户在電話上等着別掛,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麼不一樣呢?
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: 我怎麼還是不明白?
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,所以等得心甘情願。那些等着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,那客户肯定很不高興,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,我通常都會讓祕書請客户決定,是在線上繼續等,還是在電話信箱裏留言。
A: Exactly, good business etiquette as usual is to be considerate of the other person.