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."

Comments

complex modern communications devices

[Dreadlord]

as well as how to handle complex modern communications devices

Dude, this is /. , if people here don't already know how to handle these things, who knows?

Ok, thats great

[random_culchie]

Looks like we will have to phone the webmaster and tell him he will soon been /.ed. Whats the proper way to do that?

Re:Ok, thats great

[cgenman]

Recently a friend of ours was trying to get a ride to a party, but didn't start trying to contact us until after she was in our area. She called a few times until her cell battery died. She borrowed someone's computer at a cafe to e-mail us. She IM'ed us. She called from a payphone. She got frantic.

She did everything but come up and ring our doorbell. Which would have worked: we were at home.

Sometimes technology can cause people to forget the obvious ways of doing things.

Re:Ok, thats great

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes technology can cause people to forget the obvious ways of doing things.

She was probably trying to avoid pissing you off. Over the years, I've rarely gotten someone upset by calling them or sending them a message, but I've had many who stopped talking to me or chewed me up on the spot because I knocked on their door (yes, even when there was an emergency). Your friend had probably thought of the idea but dismissed it because she's had similar experiences.

It's sad but most likely, your friend wasn't as much the problem as our collective attitudes tending towards anti-socialism.

-hadohk

Re:Ok, thats great

[ScrewMaster]

Well, friends that chew you out on the spot when you knock on the door in an emergency have brain problems. I would truly hesitate to call them friends, although there is another F-word that would certainly apply. Anti-social attitudes be damned: there are certain aspects of friendship that should transcend our technological debauchery. That is, unless the meaning of "friend" has been altered beyond recognition.

Re:Ok, thats great

[geeber]

I'm up for shooting kids wanting to sell me candy bars in the head for knocking on my door.

Curious. I've never had anybody try to sell me a candy bar in the head before. And do they put the candy bar in the head as a result of knocking on the door? Or is the desire to sell caused by the knocking, and then the candy bar is added to the head after the fact?

Quite an existential dilemma you have there. No wonder you just want to shoot the damn kids and be done with it.

Communication communication everywhere...

[GillBates0]

but not a social life to speak of.

Nice article there - it was to look over the pamphlet and retrospect about how far we've come communication-wise in the past few decades. We can communicate more effectively, work more productively, and get information faster.

But I cannot say the same for the improvement in social life that technology has brought about. Sure, we have IM now, I can videoconference with my folks back home halfway across the world without paying a penny, but has it really *improved* my social life? I don't think so.

IMHO, we communicate better with people we need to (at work) and family/friends, but we don't really end up making more friends (I won't go so far as to credit Orkut groups/etc as friends). If anything, we're spending more time in front of our screens sending and accessing messages (communicating) at the cost of social interaction.

Maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling it's true for a lot of folks especially those around here.

Re:Communication communication everywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was introverted *before* I ever touched a computer. The computer lets me socialize, learn new things, and earn money. If it wasn't for computers I would probably be wandering the streets or something. I would not be as able to accept myself as I do know. Something to think about, at least.

who uses a phone?

[spacerodent]

prank calls are pretty much all I use a phone for nowdays. Anything important gets logged via email or some propritary messaging service the company gives out so theres no claiming you never saw/heard it or any ambigutiy in the wording. The only real use phones have is long distance talking to significant others where you want to try to get some personal touch in via voice but nowdays a webcam and voice over ip is the way to go. I don't even have long distance phone service at my house, for the few long distance calls I do make long distance I just use one of the 10-10+code series of deals.

Telephone?

[sirGullible]

What's a "telephone"? Is it like VoIP

Phone skills are definitely declining...

[vudufixit]

Aside from the prevalence of automated attendants, I've noticed that many human operators don't seem to know how to answer with a warm greeting, ask for information, put people on hold correctly, or bridge a call to the right person.
I've become better at handling phones simply by listening to what these people are doing wrong, and using that as a basis for improving my own phone skills.
But on the other end as a caller, I've found it helpful to announce myself at the beginning of the call, instead of having them ask me for my name. And also to have as much information ready as possible, and present it before I'm asked, IE account numbers, customer numbers, MAC address of cable modems, etc.

Re:Phone skills are definitely declining...

[vxvxvxvx]

You dial the number, with all info in hand.

*ring*
*ring*
*ring*

[them] Hello?
[you] Hi, I'm having some problems with my cable modem connection. My name is Papa Smurf, account number 1234567, and the mac address on my NIC is 00:00:00:00:00:00.
[them] Uh, what? This is Joanne's Haircare?

Is it polite

[teamhasnoi]

to post some unsuspecting person's phone number on a well trafficked bulletin board and have 250,000 people try and call at the same time?

Just wondering.

What makes you think...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

By a fucking ad and support slashdot instead of posting it as a story please.

What makes you think this isn't exactly what's going on? Story placement is a *big* part of any PR department's job...

I learned my phone skills in the military. But telemarketers who ignore the do-not-call list have forced me into a corner. Now, I simply hang up on them rather than waste more than 10 seconds on trying to be polite. I feel for the person on the other end who is often just some low wage person trying to make a living, but that's not my problem.

The hardest thing...

[Bishop, Martin]

The hardest thing about a phone conversation is trying to figure out how to pronounce "pwn3d!"

What?

[The Meshback]

So you're telling me I shouldn't answer the phone by saying:

WTF do you want?

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"

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.

These are trying times

[annielaurie]

I'm using the phone more, not less. For example:

1) Hey, I'm about to e-mail you three .JPG images and a Word Document. They're not pr0n, they're not viruses, and they're not malware from some cretin in China who wants to turn you into a zombie.

2) Hi there. I need to fax you the final proposal. I'm not trying to get you to re-finance your mortgage.

3) Did you, by chance, e-mail me three .JPG images and a Word document? I want to make sure they're not pr0n, viruses, or malware from some cretin in China who wants to turn me into a zombie.

See? The telephone isn't obsolete at all.

With or without a modem?

[Eberlin]

I've always replied to anyone who wanted to communicate over the telephone that I'm lost without a modem hooked up to the phone line. "You mean that's not just for hooking up a modem to?"

In a related story, I forget what the program was -- something that you can pop AT commands to directly...but a long time ago, my sister refused to relinquish the line so I did ATA while she was on. Kept the beeeeeeeeep on long enough for her to hang up. And thus began the great phone wars.

As far as real phone manners go, there should be a true syn-ack handshake for it. syn-> phone rings. "Hello, my name is..." terminating with the fin "um...I'm sorry, so in so does not live here anymore" [No Carrier]

Anyone that doesn't follow the protocol shouldn't be allowed to communicate. :)

Re:The only thing you need to know about telephone

[Sexy Bern]

I worked in Germany for a while. I wasn't told that the convention there is to answer the phone and merely state your surname.

First day, didn't know everybody's name. Phone rings, German geezer answers the phone and simply says "tits"!!

Different phone rings, another geezer answers, says what sounded "fuck"!

Me starts to think this is the Stuttgart office of the Tourette's society. Later learn that their names were "Titze" and "Foerch".

Oh, how we laughed.

Ha ha.

Re:as i learned last night in a dance club...

[armando_wall]

talking over the phone, via e-mail is not as clear cut as body language.

I think that I can express myself better over the phone, thank you. Going to a club and using my body language while dancing could send the message "Hey, ladies, our children could be beaten up everyday at school!".

For the next time

[TubeSteak]

next time they call to sell you something, tell them you're out of town and won't be back till next week. See what they do with that.

telemarketers

[M. Baranczak]

A better approach is to let them go through their whole pitch, then say something like: "Hold on, let me get my credit card." Then put them on hold, and ignore them. If they think they've made a sale, they WILL NOT hang up, and will stay on the line for as long as it takes (a friend of mine claims he once strung one of them along for five hours.) And while they're waiting for you, they won't be able to harass other people. Of course, you have to be willing to give up a phone line for the duration of your little game.

Re:telemarketers

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

You should ask to speak to the supervisor and string him/her along but leave the drones alone....

Oh please. IT'S A WASTE OF TIME! HANG UP!

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

Phones suck

[igrp]

Hmm, the article is still slashdotted.

Anyway, I'm a little surprised this on /. As far as I am concerned, phones suck. I use them because I have to. It's a more "instant" form of communication than email provided you manage to get the person you need to speak to on the phone. And it's the standard, as most everyone has either a landline or a cellphone but many (well, let's make that 'some') people still don't have email accounts and/or don't check them regularly.

That being said, I really dislike phones. As far as I am concerned, they're about the rudest form of communication, at least in a business environment. By chosing to make a call instead of emailing the person, you're chosing the easy way out. Basically you prioritize your time over their's. They have to talk to you even though they might be busy or doing something else. In a business environment, there are few people who can just ignore the phone.

By emailing me instead, I could have dealt with your problem on my own terms and allocated time based on my current schedule (that the caller's certainly not aware of), needs and priorities. Should I not see your email in time (which is unlikely since my mail server notifies me of some new emails (procmail is great, isn't it) via text message) you could still call.

That's why I have two cell phones. I use one during business hours, the number is on my business cards and if you call me on it during business hours I will answer, period. The other is my personal phone. It's small enough that I can easily take it everywhere, the number is not listed and only known to family, friends and customers who have expressed that they might need to reach me. Family and friends can call me anytime, no matter what. Same goes for customers, but they have to pay me (depends on the contract but usually I charge tripple) if they need me when I'm off. They're aware of that and don't bother me with trivial problems. If something important comes up, they know how to reach me though. Everybody's happy.

So generally, I do prefer email or text messaging to phone calls. That way, I get to choose who I talk to. As far as I am concerned, it's a lot more polite to email me than to call me at 9 in the morning when I might still be asleep.

Some Questions on *new* Telephone Technology

[mykepredko]

The article is slashdotted and I don't see a pointer to a mirror, but based on other people's comments, it sounds like it is a rehash of '50s rules and ettiquette and if it isn't how does it respond to questions like:

1. If you have call display, is it polite to answer the phone with the caller's name? I couple of years ago, this freaked people out, now it's very common. Older people tend to think of this as an invasion of privacy; but these same people consider it acceptable to have a peephole on their door and only open it to people they know.

2. What about call answer? Should you take the incoming call and how long should you be on it before returning to the original call? What happens if you consider the second call to be more important than the first?

3. Is call screening using an answering machine polite?

4. I give telemarketers one chance to hang up before I slam the receiver down on them. Is this polite or should I listen to their pitch? Can I blow a Fox-40 whistle into the receiver?

5. What are cell phone rules? Is it acceptable to have a social call while in line at the supermarket? What about a heated business call?

I suspect that a lot of these answers are based on how old you are and what your workplace experience is.

Enquiring minds want to know!

myke

Re:Usefull for girls

[Powercntrl]

As a geek with a girlfriend, I can say the phone is critical. While IM is usefull for large numbers of people, the phone is better for personal conversations where voice inflection has more meaning.

And asking someone out on IM is just bad.

I call bullshit. Not on the fact that you have a girlfriend, hey, anything is possible... It may not be as romantic as using the telephone, but I know a lot of people that have successfully arranged dates through IM.

Here's a hint, it's not so much the medium you use as it is what you say. Sometimes people (especially us geeks) get so caught up in the technology behind the communications medium we forget what it's really for - exchanging thoughts and ideas.

If you're not able to talk to a girl in real life, talking via IM isn't going to suddenly turn you into an Internet Don Juan. Likewise, if you know how to talk to the opposite sex, it doesn't matter whether you're speaking on the phone, corresponding through snail-mail or using IM. It's what you say that matters, not the means of conveying the information.

maybe something more relevant...

[sevinkey]

we know how to use devices, how about teaching us how to communicate in person, and have the other person believe we're not weird without putting up a front.

maybe that's an oxymoron?

Ford Motor Co.

[metalligoth]

In the Detroit area, one of the suburban area codes (248-xxx-xxxx) is 248.

At Ford headquarters, one of the local city exchanges is 248. (xxx-248-xxxx).

Whenever anyone from downtown Detroit tries to call someone from the suburbs with a 248 area code, and doesn't dial a "1" to indicate a long distance call, they get some unhappy engineer at Ford.

It usually goes something like this:

*ring* Ford employee notices local number on Caller ID they don't recognize...

"Ford Motor Co. this is xxxx"

*In very strong urban accent* "Is Tiniqua there?"

"Excuse me? This is For-"

"If you don't put Tiniqua on the phone, some shit is goin' down. Who the f*** are you, cracka?"

"This isn't who you tried to dial. This is For-"

"WHAT? You sayin' I stu-pid too? I can't dial no phone? I don't think so. That's it! I'm comin' down there to find out where tha hell she is!"

*click* *sigh*

*true story*

Over 7 years ago...

[Andy_R]

assuming there is a 7 year statute of limitations... I had in my office a mysterious phone socket, which didn't seem to generate a telelphone bill. This was long before caller id, so I had no way of finding out the number, so I used that one for outgoing calls and my own for incoming.

A side effect of this is that every incoming call on the mystery line was a wrong number. Following my high standards of telephone etiquette, I started off politely greeting callers with "Hello, this is the wrong number.", which (despite being factual, formal, polite and clear english) seemed to baffle the vast majority of callers.

Responses varied from polite confusion, through stubborn insistence that I must either BE the person the other party wanted to speak to or at least able but unwilling to put me though to them, all the way to someone who called 10 times in as many minutes asking for "Dave", getting more annoyed each time. On the 10th call I said "OK, you win this is Dave, what do you want?", at which point he hung up on me.

After a while I got bored with politeness and switched to making prank answers (like prank calls, but the other way round), the objective of which was to keep a straight face while cracking everyone else in the office up. The most successful of these was 'dial-a-duck', the premium rate porn service for duck fetishists, which involved answering the phone with "Hi, welcome to Dial-a-Duck", and then carring on the resulting conversation using only the word "quack", in as seductive a manner as possible.