It seems we don’t always give great thought to our behavior on phone calls these days. With smartphones we’ve even lost those last precious moments of dialing time, which used to allow us to get into a proper “phone call headspace.” The thought of a rotary phone, watching each number inch back around to its starting position, makes me squirm impatiently in my swivel chair. But recently I watched a TV series set in 1914, just before the commencement of WWI, which focused on the estate life of a wealthy family and the help it employed. At Downton Abbey, the primary concern of the staff members was upholding dignity in their post, but navigating the modernizing world around them with these traditions in mind was difficult.
What struck me the most was the episode when the estate installed its first phone. The butler, who greets guests at the front door, is naturally assigned the new duty of answering the phone. He sneaks away to a private room and practices a few different greetings. Suddenly, the operator says something back to him. He was not expecting anyone to hear him and he explains that he is testing proper ways to answer the line. She presumably mocks his attempt and he shouts, “Well, I am sure a lot of the things you say sound silly, too!”
We now seem to be born with a clear technical understanding of how to place phone calls, but as new technology decreases the time it takes to connect to people, we’ve also decreased the time we spend practicing etiquette and connecting with people.
Answering the main phone for a business is a lot like answering the front door. Not everyone is trained in this art, just as the butler was the only one at the estate trained to answer both the door and the phone. It was the operator’s duty in the story to kindly assist the butler as he learned how to behave on a phone call. As a virtual receptionist, I still consider it my duty to lead by example on each call I take.
At Ruby, we begin etiquette training by ensuring that our callers can hear us properly. Nothing starts a call out better than a connection free of worry about static or feedback. After all, you wouldn’t have to worry about that if you were talking to someone in person! We are also trained to use proper grammar in order to sound professional as well as polite. Collecting a name or phone number by asking “may I have” creates a personable tone, rather the demanding tone of “can I get.” If a caller sounds frustrated, we strive to maintain a helpful demeanor. It can be difficult to express empathy without the help of body language, so we provide additional help by letting the caller know everything we are able to do for them. And what about our clients? I love that by letting them know who’s on the line before connecting the call, we are able to give them time to compose themselves and really settle in before taking the call. We also assist their conversations by collecting all of the information they need before transferring their calls and by taking clear and concise messages in their absence.
