Ian Ellingham, MBA, PhD, PLE, FRAIC
What happens when someone phones your office? Unless you are in a very small office, where one of the senior people ends up answering, you probably don’t know – and even then…
Despite the proliferation of on-line information, the first real contact with a potential business client is often by phone. Perhaps I am not the only person who finds many on-line inquiry mechanisms to be unsatisfactory – and these often seem to go without a response (something to muse about some other time). Moreover, if the on-line information is attractive, the next step in the relationship is often by telephone.
The telephone response can be an important part of a firm’s marketing, yet is often done by the youngest and least-experienced person in the organisation, or, sometimes, by anyone who happened to pick up the phone. My accountant recently told me that he frequently heard complaints from senior managers (COO, CFO…) that their firm’s annoying salespeople made more than they did. That difference suggests how important marketing is to business. Yet, I have never personally encountered an organisation that has had specific phone answering guidelines.
First Contact: The Opening
A couple of recent incidents when I wanted to buy a product or service have made me think about this.
Some things are fairly obvious – the phone should not ring fifteen times before it is answered (although perhaps excusable when you are calling the shop floor), the hold sounds should not be loud acid rock (that may appeal to some people who want their minds altered or are selling related – and perhaps illegal - products…)
Personally, I like it when the response is a pleasant greeting (Hello, good morning…) and then the name of the company (that means I have the correct number).
It is always nice when the response is intelligible. I had a great auto mechanic, who was virtually undecipherable on the phone – his only language was English, but he had been brought up in one of the more interesting parts of Glasgow. In that case, you knew you had reached the shop, even if you didn’t understand what he said when he answered. But he had a loyal clientele, and new clients came from personal referrals, so his phone response was probably appropriate – and even endearing.
Perhaps it is a generational thing, but the answerer should not be over-familiar – formality in business is a good default. Mr. or Ms. is a great form of address, even if the caller is a doctor, colonel or prime minister. Yet, I suspect even the Prime Minister sometimes is sometimes called ‘Justin’ by a twenty-year-old receptionist [1].
There is academic research on the topic, often exploring cultural differences. Unfortunately, most research considers what is common practice, not how effective different approaches might be, and the research focus appears to have drifted towards more recent forms of communication than the telephone. But it can help to consider the basic structure for telephone opening gambits, such as described by Gabriele Pallotti (University of Modena and Reggio) and Cecilia Varcasia (University of Sassari) [2] in exploring Italian, Spanish, French, British and German tendencies. They identified:
“a) Channel openers. These are forms whose aim is uniquely to signal that the communication channel has been opened, i.e. to provide a minimal answer to the summons represented by the telephone ring. They include Italian pronto, French allô and Spanish dígame, but also a generic ‘yes’.
b) Identification. Callers and receivers may identify themselves in various ways, e.g. by providing their personal names or that of the institution they work for.
c) Greetings, such as hello or good morning. [3]
d) Availability. This move, which is found almost exclusively in the British corpus, consists in the receiver stating their availability to the caller’s requests, as in how can I help you?
e) Getting down to business, i.e. formulating the reason for the call and moving from the opening to the call’s central part.”
In their research, Pallotti and Varcasia found numerous differences in how these five steps are implemented in the cultures studied. For example, the extent to which the phone answer immediately identifies themselves or their company, as opposed to a simple ‘hello’ type of response- “95% of the times in English, 91% in German, 71% in French, 67% in Italian, 62% in Spanish”. They also found that in Germany, almost always the answerer’s proper name was given as well as some corporate identification: ‘Hello, ABC Consulting, Mary speaking’. Perhaps this ritual is a sort of distant hand-shake – a formal sounding out of the parties.
Others have classified things somewhat differently, such as Schegloff (1986) who also included another step : the “'howareyou' sequences’” [4] / ‘Awright, yourself?’, something that may have emerged from his work in the U.S. Schegloff noted this exchange provides a potential for the parties to share some matter of shared concern.
What should we do in our multi-cultural Canada? The overall steps seem logical, and research suggests they may be almost universal, albeit with different cultural twists. The important item is undoubtedly to make the greeting friendly, in order to create a linkage between the parties: “Expressions like (how) can I help you? seem to be not just stereotyped frozen politeness formulas, but rather a way of actually expressing the receiver’s orientation towards the caller’s needs.” [5]
What Happens Next?
Beyond initial context, what happens to that potential client? Things can be very frightening.
I recently had to get some prices on some building bits and pieces for a renovation. It was a substantial piece of work, and the client wanted two quotes. One came quite promptly: the company was just around the corner and knew the building. Another local firm was suggested, so I phoned to arrange for one of their people to come by. There were two possible ways of doing the work, but I was informed this would involve two visits, because different people handled each type – each of them would come separately and measure and prepare their own estimates. They would call back to arrange things. After three weeks I had heard nothing, but an acquaintance provided the name and direct phone number of their main estimator. We set up a get-together. A pleasant, knowledgeable individual turned up, we went over things, he measured, and a few days later the estimates appeared – for both alternatives and some well-considered suggestions. Three days after the visit I received a phone call from their office – to arrange the site visits. After finding out that the visit had already occurred, the caller became irate – that was not the way they did things, and who did I think I was anyway? (Perhaps a potential customer?) As it turned out, they did not have the low price – but it would have had to be considerably lower if I was to recommend them to my client after the bizarre phone interaction.
This was not a unique experience. I recall, some years ago, again getting prices for a client, phoning a supplier I had dealt with many times before. The CEO was away, and so I spoke with someone else, who arrogantly told me they only dealt with big clients and certainly not me. He didn’t stop talking, so I could not tell him that the last order was for well over a hundred thousand dollars. I accepted his verdict that I was obviously not important enough, so found another supplier, who gave me a very competitive price, and received the order. Smarting from the encounter, I never asked the first firm again. I still feel guilty for not having told the firm’s CEO.
In another case, in response to an inquiry, the answerer started by stating what they charged for their services. Products sold by declaring the price as an opening statement tends to be done only when selling on the basis of low price, such as done by dollar stores – rarely by professional consultants, who usually need more details in order to formulate a price. In some endeavours, the true price is revealed later, and sometimes slowly. Telling someone upfront that the car being considered will cost $100,000 may send the prospect out of the showroom – hence a frequent representation is what it will cost per week or month, and ongoing reminders of the car’s features.
Anyone in the firm who may be responding to a telephone inquiry, needs to know how to proceed, even to an inquiry about something the firm does not offer – perhaps being able to offer advice on where to find that product or service. Networks are important, and in small market areas, such as Niagara, people are connected – and a helpful word can enhance the reputation of the firm.
Closings: Ending the call…
Reviewing web advice, we again see a list of steps on how to wrap up a telephone inquiry:
1. Summarize (hopefully reasonably briefly) what was accomplished for each party.
2. If relevant, tell the caller what will happen next – and some sort of timescale.
3. Ask if that covered everything – and be willing to add a few comments.
4. End with a pleasant few words – and if possible, include the caller’s name ‘Ms. Smith, Thank you for calling us at ABC Consulting.’
Think about your own encounters with offices – your physician or dentist, a supplier or a service provider. What impression resulted, especially if you have never contacted them before, or in the recent past, and perhaps did not know all that much about what you are contacting them for?
What issues might need to be addressed through instructions or policy?
- The receptionist may be the least-experienced person in the organisation, so may not actually know much about the products or services the firm is offering – or even who in the office might be able to help the caller.
- A young person may have limited social skills, and/or believe that everyone belongs to his/her generation and culture, with anyone over forty being some sort of senile antique. Mark Liberman and Cynthia McLemore of the University of Pennsylvania, in their research into opening gambits, noted one business phone that was answered “mm yup?”[6] When selling certain services, it is likely that any potential client is no longer a teenager.
- The person contacting the firm may be a new immigrant with limited experience in English usage.
- It is some sort of demented power game, where the answerer is trying to dominate or impress the person phoning in.
- The firm’s management has not recognised that answering the telephone is an important part of marketing, so no-one is supervising or has instructed the answerers. Liberman and McLemore noted that even in the case of major fast food chains, there was no consistency in the dialogue when different branches were phoned.
- Some other unfathomable reason.
Do you know what happens after your firm’s phone rings?
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NOTES
[1]- There are exceptions to everything – I know a couple of people who should be addressed by their first name– but it is proceeded by a ‘Sir’.
[2] Pallotti and Varcasia (2008)
[3] Alexander Graham Bell proposed ‘Ahoy’, but it has not caught on (yet). https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/ahoy-alexander-graham-bell-and-first-telephone-call
[4] Schegloff (1984) p.118.
[5] Pallotti and Varcasia (2008) p.15.
[6] Liberman and McLemore (1992) p.71.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Fairchild, Marilyn, 2014. 'Mind your modals: The telephone request in a business context'. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/164474.
Grieve, Averil. and Seebus, Ingrid, 2008. 'G’day or Guten Tag?: A cross-cultural study of Australian and German telephone openings' Journal of Pragmatics, 40(7), pp.1323-1343.
Liberman, Mark Y. and McLemore, Cynthia, 1992. 'The structure and intonation of business telephone openings'. The Penn Review of Linguistics, 16, pp.68-83. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/LibermanMcLemore1992.pdf
Lindstrom, Anna K. 1994. 'Identification and recognition in Swedish telephone conversation openings.' Language in Society 23 (1994): 231 - 252.
Pallotti, Gabriele and Varcasia, Cecilia, 2008. 'Service telephone call openings: A comparative study on five European languages'. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 17, pp.1-25.
Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1986. 'The routine as achievement'. Human Studies 9 (2–3), 111–151.
[1] There are exceptions to everything – I know a couple of people who should be addressed by their first name initially– but it is proceeded by a ‘Sir’.
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