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, 剛纔你過來的時候，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。我剛纔一直在電話上等。想掛，可是好不容易纔打通，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，別說半分鐘；我剛纔足足等了半小時。不過，Amy, 說實話，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，我都會讓客戶在電話上等着別掛，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，他們知道對方是在爲自己解決問題，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，那客戶肯定很不高興，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戶決定，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.