Politely Placing Callers On Hold

礼貌请求客人等待

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.