Korean Job Discussion Forums

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America, You Have Atrocious Phone Manners: An AC Experiment on Phone Etiquette
February 03, 2007 by Valerie Ferrari

Psychologists will confirm that the abuse of someone who has less power is a serioius sign of a personality disorder. The clerk at McDonalds or the convienience store or the CSR on the phone; especially the CSR on the phone since the customer is calling from their home. In many cases , these callers would be arrested for disorderly conduct if this behavior were in public.


Receptionists, customer service reps and secretaries all over America agree, as they are pulling out what's left of their hair, that most callers across the country have atrocious phone manners. Never mind the irate callers and disgruntled customers they have to deal with on a regular basis. They're not talking about that. They're talking about the folks who call up and assume that everyone knows who they are, even though these employees are handling several phone lines and typing or writing at the same time. They're talking about the callers who open the conversation up with "Is he in?" as if they expect the receptionist to say: "He sure is, let me put you right through," and then get offended when the receptionist says "May I ask who's calling?"

"Part of my job," says Lynette, a secretary in a law firm, "is to get a coherent message, and a callback number. My boss says 'if you don't have a number, they didn't call'. You'd be amazed at how many people hang up without leaving their number, or say 'He knows it,' if you ask them for their number. Yes, when it comes to clients we have their numbers but it just takes less time in the course of the working day to get it in the conversation, than to stop what you're doing to look it up." Lynette also has to prepare correspondence and legal documents, pay filing fees and office bills while simultaneously taking phone messages, and she simply won't get any work done unless you improve your atrocious phone manners and just say your first and last name, and leave your number.

Cynthia works in a busy real estate office. "You honestly wouldn't believe how many clients with common names just give their first name and expect me to put their call through. No can do. My boss knows a lot of Toms, Johns and Marys. If I buzzed him on the intercom and said 'It's Mary,' you better believe he'd read me the riot act! He even has a sister named Mary, but she at least has the common courtesy to say 'It's his sister, Mary '. "

[bacasper]

I would not say I have atrocious phone manners. What I DO have is little patience for ineptitude and inefficiency.

After wading through several phone menus, including giving my account number, it is irritating to have to give it again, answer the security questions, and then do it again after I am transferred to "someone who can help" me. Often, that is not the right person either, so I must go through it all again with someone else. Then of course, I end up getting transferred back to the person I started with. Yes, at this point I may become abusive.

If the person then gives me wrong information, she is in for it. Well, not for just wrong information, but when they insist they are right, and I KNOW they are not. I'll talk to the supervisor and report them, and in fairness, when I get excellent service I report that, too.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

While I agree that North Americans generally (not all) have what I would call poor telephone manners, I think the article only measures a small part of the problem. The larger problem is abuse of the telephone service as a whole. Companies pretend to offer service by telephone, and then make you jump through confusing menus to discourage you. They hire stupid people to help you for peanuts wages. They call you incessantly to sell you things you don't want or to ask for money. All of these things lead people to think of the telephone as a battleground unless they're talking to friends. Blaming the customer is only half the equation.

When I lived in the states we cut off our home line because it gave us nothing but irritation. Carpet cleaning, charities, political parties, collection agencies with wrong numbers. I had a cell phone but wherever at all possible I did things over the internet.

[djsmnc]

[Reggie]

I managed truck drivers for eight years, and whenever I would need to call a shipper, a receiver, or anyone else in New Jersey or New York City (but not upstate New York), the people there were disgruntled and upset around 80% of the time. Everywhere else in the USA, rude people were the exception, but in NJ and NYC it was the norm.

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[bacasper]

[pkang0202]

[pkang0202]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[pkang0202]

I'm interested to know if there is a difference between caller's attitudes when the first thing they hear is a real person or an automated message.

I usually lose my patience in the endless maze of navigating the automated message.

Press 1 for English, Espaniol something dos

Then you go through the menu. When you get to the one you want, it says something like, "Please visit our website."

Hangup, call again, go through a different route.

I've made it a habit to either hit 0 or say "representative" when I get to the first menu. Usually that gets you speaking to someone.

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[pkang0202]

[bacasper]

After spending time and aggravation keying in my account number, why must I give it again when the human finally comes on the line? Am I the only one who finds this annoying?

Have you ever tried calling a phone company only to be told you must write? I'm like, "This is the phone company, right?"

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