How To Make Friends on the Telephone

Dan writes "What a wonderful find--it seems since the internet, we've forgotten the correct way to communicate with people. So here is a book to teach us the proper etiquette, as well as how to handle complex modern communications devices."

My thoughts

[Twid]

Well, if you knew what the link was (which you won't from the terrible description) you would understand why it's slashdotted already. It's scans of an old telephone etiquette booklet. Graphics heavy, just begging to be slashdotted. Maybe we need a "slashdot story posting etiquette" booklet. :)

Here's an archive.org snapshot of the first page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030602171945/http://c ontactsheet.org/junk/telephone1.html" [archive.org]

I've been working with sales people for a long time, and I've learned a few things about voice mail etiquette:

leave your name, phone number, and a very brief description of what you want FIRST, then go on to any details

leave your return number SLOW ENOUGH THAT SOMEONE CAN WRITE IT DOWN. I can't tell you how many people actually SPEED UP TO AUCTION CALLER SPEEDS when leaving their number. If I have to play your number back five times to get it, I'm not going to bother. A good tip is to write your number down on scrap paper as you say it.

if your name is hard to spell, SPELL IT. Or at least say it SLOWLY.

Also, what's with people making phone calls from the public toilet? When I was at WWDC this year, I saw tons of people doing this, usually they were european. (No pun intended, but it's tempting.) Is this a cultural thing that I as an american don't understand? Seems to me the sound of background flushing would be a bit off-putting to a co-worker or potential customer.

Re:Telemarketing

[effex100]

The correct way to respond to that is to tell them you do not want to receive anymore calls so could they please remove your number from their list. In most states they have to by law.

Re:Telephone?

[Planesdragon]

Close. But unlike VoIP, the quality is good, and you don't need your computer to be on.

The best VoIP services, such as Vonage and that thing Time Warner is rolling out, are desinged to work like this older "POTS" system.

You've probably encountered this system before you had a broadband connection. It's like DSL, but the technology is much more primitive.

Manners, Shmanners

[CristalShandaLear]

Phone ettiquette my eye. Finally my bi-weekly reading of Miss Manners pays off.

Check out this bit [washingtonpost.com] from the Duchess of Ettiquette that explains why the invention of the telephone is rude in and of itself.

Re:telemarketers

[Michael Spencer Jr.]

That gives me an idea for an interesting use of VoIP/Asterisk: drop one of these guys into a fake extension that plays a continuous audio loop that sounds like a phone that's been sat down on the desk, with someone looking for their credit card, without tying up your phone or phone line so you can still receive calls.

Step 1: get a VoIP account from someplace like VoicePulse or Nufone.

If you use Inter-Asterisk Exchange to connect to their service ("IAX termination"), something interesting happens: even though you have only one inbound phone number, multiple calls into that number each get their own VoIP connection. So yes, 100 people could call you at the same time and saturate your Internet connection with VoIP traffic.

This also means your provider doesn't handle call waiting or anything like that for you: you need to tell Asterisk how to handle multiple calls where your phone is already busy. You can be simple and just go straight to voicemail; you can do fancy stuff like transfer to a phone queue ("All representatives of the household are currently assisting other telemarketers. Please hold, and your call will be answered in the order it was received.") or to an IVR ("If this is an emergency, press 1 to have me paged." etc) or anything you want.

Step 2: Record an audio loop of someone sitting the phone down and looking for their credit card.

Set up your Asterisk box with a special-purpose extension for recording audio from your telephone. For example:

exten => 732,1,Wait(1)
exten => 732,2,Record(telemark:wav|0|0)
exten => 732,3,Hangup

Put that in a context that your inside telephone can access but outside callers calling in can't access, and then pick up your phone and call x732 ("REC"). You'll hear a beep -- then immediately set the phone down and play-act like you're looking for your credit card. Remember, you're going to be playing this audio in a loop, so if you say anything longer than a word or two, your target may figure out he's listening to the same thing over again.

Phone reps will probably mute the phone so you can't hear them and then do something else while they wait. If you rattle the phone, or make noises that sound like maybe you're coming back to the phone, or maybe you just bumped the phone by accident, they'll have to pay a little more attention and can't tune you out completely while they wait.

After you've got 20 or 30 minutes of audio on there, hang the phone up. Then go find the wav file in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/ and open it in an audio editor, and trim out the beginning and end where you picked up and/or put down the phone.

Step 3: Create a 'trap' extension to park telemarketers into.

Again in a context you can access but outside callers can't, add an extension:

exten => 3845,1,Playback(telemark)
exten => 3845,2,Goto(1)

Use Playback instead of Background because you don't want the system to react to button presses -- you don't want them dialing their way out of your trap and back onto your phone.

Then, when you get a telemarketer call, string them along as per the parent post, and then just transfer the caller to extension 3845 (or whatever arbitrary extension number you pick) and hang up. Then your phone line is free, and the caller hears your recording in a continuous loop until they hang up.

If it's legal in your area (one-party-consent state), you could even record the call while playing that loop. Just change that part of the dialplan to something like:

exten => 3845,1,Monitor(wav,telemarketer-trap-recording)
e xten => 3845,2,Playback(telemark)
exten => 3845,3,Goto(2)

and then if you're bored, load the files up in an audio editor and skip to the loudest sections, to see if you caught them saying anything interesting. :-)

(I can't believe I just sat here and wrote all that. Yes, I'm at work, and I'm bored. :) )

Have fun!

--Michael Spencer

Re:The only thing you need to know about telephone

[jimhill]

Actually, putting the question mark after the word indicates that it's to be spoken with rising inflection, as opposed to the blandness of "Hello."

That said, the appropriate thing to say depends on where you work. On a shop floor, for example, you might opt for "Shop floor, this is Joe." In a technical office kind of environment, quickly state your organization and name, e.g., "Mergers and acquisitions, Floyd Smith." Perhaps your name is irrelevant, so you go with "Elton Electricians, how can I help you?" If you're your own boss, the name alone can suffice: "Jeff Smith."

The key thing is to answer the phone with a brief greeting that immediately lets the caller know if he's reached the place/person he was after. "Hello" with or without question mark fails to do so.

How are you answering the phone?

[devphil]

If -- as I was taught, for business contexts -- you answer the phone with some statement including your name, then they wouldn't have to ask.

Now, if you do that, and they simply ask for somebody else without identifying themselves, then hey, read 'em the riot act, because they're still rude.

Re:maybe something more relevant...

[eugene ts wong]

Oddly enough, the answer seems to be in that book. The book does an excellent job setting standards & explaining why they are in place. It explains the incentives behind each standard. It also doesn't assume that the person is familiar with the technology. It has illustrations. It has clear titles for memorizing concepts.

Contrast that with man pages. Do the man pages explain why you would want to use them? What about info pages? What about HowTos? Obviously, these documents were written to a different market, & thus it is comparing apples to oranges. However, there is wisdom in comparing them anyways.

When that girl asks you how you are doing, do understand why she is asking? What about if she brings up a topic? What if she mentions something about your shirt? Would you know what to say? I'm not an expert, so I'm not even going to attempt to explain that which I don't know. However, it is safe to say that there is a rhythm in the conversation that needs to be followed. If you want to change the subject, then there needs to be a relatively specific way of doing that.

I encourage everybody to go back & read that book, but this time think in terms of what the other person needs & wants when you talk on the phone. Try to identify those needs & wants, & see if there are any needs or wants which are common to face-to-face conversations. Then go ahead & try to meet those needs. Think of phrases & sentences as tools for meeting needs & fixing miscommunications.

Like I said, I'm not an expert. I've never even had a girl friend in my entire life. I've never dated very much either.