You may have noticed if you read my blogs that I have a love hate relationship with my phone. I sometimes miss calls becasue I have it off or on silent. I need to screen my calls because I really don’t want to talk to all the wonderful vendors out there trying to sell me blog platforms and a bunch of other stuff that I eaither already have or don’t have becasue I am not interested.
When the messages go into voice mail I sometimes have to play them five or even six times to get the phone number if I want to return the call. I am amazed by how fast people can say their phone numbers but would love to know why they say them so fast that it is impossible to make out the numbers and write them down. I tend to say my own number slowly and I repeat my name at the end of the message because most people have forgotten it by the time they listen to the message and the number.
What am I missing here? Is there some business reason for reciting my phone number at a hyper fast speed? Some of my phone calls do not get returned because I don’t have the patience to decipher the number.
No, it’s not just you. I actually teach a phone ettiquette class for my company. I, too, sometimes skip calling back when a caller rattles off a phone number too quickly.
A collegue of mine who visits a performance coach regularly is advising now that cell phones have become common extensions to your office phone, and to keep productivity and concentration on the task at hand, letting phone calls roll to voice mail and returning cell phone calls at set times during the day, and even the next day. One highly successful agent in his class rolls all calls to voice mail and returns the calls the next day. Invariably the urgency of whatever the caller needed is diminished or the caller has helped himself.
Of course, this assumes that there’s a different system in place to capture warm leads as they come into the office.
Marbles . . . I swear they’re in a hurry or they’ve all got marbles in their mouths! I actually leave my number so slowly in voicemails that I’m sure GenXers go bonkers waiting for the next number!
That is one of my pet peeves. It seems they talk slow until they get to the telephone number and then they speed it up. Like we can speed up our ears or something.
Gimme a break already callers!
I’m always telling my daughter to S L O W down. Growing up in the South, I don’t talk so fast, but man she does.
Best to repeat the number twice.
Sometimes like you I have to listen 4-5 times to get it. So frustrating.