21

Phone Communication

21.1 Introduction

The telephone, perhaps the earliest invention that enhanced communication across boundaries, has now changed its face completely. What used to be a simple instrument (with an annoying persistent and monotonous ringtone) glued to your desks as a massive black lump has now evolved into a sleek and sophisticated gadget with myriad multimedia communication capabilities, elaborate storage possibilities and various organizer and productivity features—besides being ‘mobile’ so that you can carry it and use it almost anywhere in the world. The Blackberries, iPhones, Android phones etc., have all ushered in an exciting era of telephone communication, giving you many more choices (and many more annoying ringtones) and many novel ways to conduct business communication, extending from voice to data to multimedia. Phones have now percolated down to all strata of society and are integrating all humanity into a complex network of communication channels, making it possible for almost anyone to reach anyone else, anywhere in the world, at any time—a perfect pill for today’s globalized business. Alexander Graham Bell may have invented the telephone. But we are still discovering it and trying to come up with even newer applications for telephony.

In this chapter, we are going to treat the telephone as, well, just a telephone! Because it still continues to be a commonly used medium for voice communication, we will discuss tips on how to use phones for what they were originally intended—voice communication. Our focus will be on using the phone for business communication. We will begin with some general tips on international business calls in Section 21.2. Then we will look at the structure of a typical business phone call in Section 21.3. This will be followed by a discussion on phone interviews in Section 21.4 and one on phone conference calls in Section 21.5. We conclude with a summary in Section 21.6.

21.2 Some General Tips on International Business Calls

Let us look at some common rules of international phone etiquette that are applicable to all types of business calls.

As much as possible, business calls should be from office phones: In most Western countries, there is a clear distinction between official calls (on office landline phones) and personal calls (on their personal mobile phones and residential landline phones). Most international stakeholders are reluctant to part with their personal mobile-phone numbers and consider it poor manners if you call their personal mobile phones to talk business, especially during non-office hours.

While on the phone, shut out all distractions: Today’s phones come with a lot of additonal features, such as call-waiting and incoming email notification. These features can create distractions during phone calls. While on a conversation, disable or do not pay attention to these distractions. During your phone call, do not multitask or fiddle around with your computer. If anyone comes into your office, gently signal to them that you will see them later. Give the phone call your undivided attention.

Talk softly; do not shout into the phone: These days international landline calls are of reasonably good quality and you do not have to scream into the phone. So keep your voice to a soft, yet comprehensible level. If you do have a bad connection and have to resort to being loud, it is a good idea to move to a conference room and use the phone there rather than disturb your cube-mate. Besides, if you are loud in public, your entire office may get to hear your side of the conversation, including the parts that are meant to be confidential.

Be ready with all supporting documents: During your phone call, you may require access to data and documents. Make sure that you have all of them available at your fingertips, either in hard copy or soft copy. This also means that you should have all the necessary tools and infrastructure ready on your computer. This includes connection to the right network, access to appropriate tools and so on. Saying, ‘Oh, I know I had it somewhere. Let me search…’ and then wasting a few minutes does not show professionalism.

Always introduce yourself at the beginning of each call: When you make a call or answer a call, always introduce yourself—even if you feel that the person at the other end knows who you are. With the caller ID feature, if it is a known number, you know who is calling anyway. But still, it is considered good manners to identify yourself each time you call. (‘Hello John, this is Murali from XYZ Corporation calling.’) Do not startle your international colleagues with a ‘Hey it is me!’ kind of addressing when you call them. Identify yourself even if you are the receiver of the call.

Always conclude each call with a greeting: Never put the receiver down without an appropriate closure. ‘Thanks Azhar, I will get back to you with the details by tomorrow. Have a nice day. Bye!’ is an example of a proper closure. In most instances, a simple bye would suffice and is expected at the end of any formal business call.

21.3 Elements of a Typical Business Phone Call

A business phone call roughly goes through the following steps:

• Exchanging initial greetings
• Establishing a virtual handshake with the other person
• Getting down to business
• Summarizing
• Following through with the minutes of the call
• Taking all action items to completion

Let us look at each of these steps in detail below.

Exchanging initial greetings: If you are answering a phone, basic courtesy demands that you do not let the phone ring until (what appears to be) eternity for the caller. Make it a habit to pick up the phone in no more than 3–5 rings.

When the phone rings and you answer it, do so with a courteous greeting:

• The universally understood greeting ‘Hello’ or variations thereof, such as ‘Hello, this is Ajay of RYZ Corp.’ or ‘Good Morning, this is Ajay’ or even ‘Hi, this is Ajay Jaiswal’ would be appropriate.
• If you are in a customer service position, an even better way of answering the call would be, ‘Good morning, this is Ajay of RYZ Corp. How may I assist you?’
• Do not use a rough-sounding ‘Yes?’ or ‘Yeah?’ or ‘Jaiswal’. Or worse still, do not keep silent after attending the call, waiting for the other person to start the conversation.

  When you initiate a call:

• Wait for the person at the other end to say hello. It is extremely impolite to start talking even before the other person has had a chance to speak.
• After the hello, identify yourself clearly to the person you called. Do not presume your voice to be so familiar that people would recognize you right away.
• If you are making an unscheduled call, preemptively apologize for interrupting and ask them if it is going to be okay to talk for a few minutes. Most people should be okay with a short phone call even if they are busy. As a matter of courtesy, keep your call short and to the point. If they explicitly tell you at the outset that they are too busy, excuse yourself. But find out when it is convenient for you to call them again and follow through promptly. Likewise, if you need to talk to them at length, find out when best to do so and call them back at a convenient time.

Establishing a handshake: Identifying the parties involved in the call is the first part of the virtual handshake of a telephone call. By this, we mean that both you and the other person have a fair idea of each other, what organization you or they represent, etc. The first part of the handshake also includes how you address the other person. For example, if the person at the other end is your customer and you do not know him or her well, address him as Sir or her as Ma’am.

The rest of the handshake is about establishing a rapport and setting the tone (no pun intended) for the rest of the conversation. You start with a very brief warm up. A reasonably simple ‘How are you? How are things out there?’ kind of greeting would quickly and effectively provide a natural transition to the main point of the phone call.

Getting down to business: After the handshake comes the main body of the phone call. Here are some general tips:

• Sound cheerful and energetic. As you have to make the call without the help of body language, your voice should carry cheerfulness and energy.
• Remember to use a lot of polite words, such as please, sorry, and thank you.
• Be especially courteous when interrupting the other person. Make polite interruptive sounds or come up with a ‘May I say something?’ Do not aggressively butt in.
• While talking, you and the other party should go back and forth alternately, using short sentences and simple language. No one person should hog the conversation or try to overwhelm the other person.
• Allow pauses so that the other person can get into the conversation. If what you say is unclear to the other person, repeat it again. If it is still unclear, paraphrase your sentences.
• Use the methods of active listening described in Chapter 13 to ensure that you and the recipient are in tune.
• Keep a writing pad next to your phone and take down notes as you speak. String them together as an email, if needed. If the communication is formal, send the other person a copy of this email so that there won’t be any confusion or misunderstanding later.

Summarizing: The last part of a call is used for summarizing it. Such a summary should cover at a minimum:

• What is agreed to be done by each party, along with agreed upon dates
• A list of action items that have to be carried out by other people and details about how those other people are going to be notified
• When the minutes of the call, if you are going to formally document them (and we strongly recommend that you should), would be sent
• When and how you are going to sync up again to review the follow-up actions

Try to end the conversation on a bright, positive note. A short spell of small talk towards the end of the call is good practice. When you finish talking, make sure you actually utter the word bye before ending the call. Just hanging up without a formal bye is considered extremely rude.

Following through with minutes: Business phone calls arise out of action items. And they end up generating more action items and requests for information. So it is important to keep track of these things. The first action item is that you quickly send a summary of all phone-generated action items by email to the other party—just to let them know what transpired. This way the action items will become part of the formal project paperwork. The tips given in Chapter 20 about writing minutes of meetings are applicable here as well.

If you are the organizer of a conference call, make sure that you send out the minutes of the call as well as the agenda for the next call. And do not forget to reserve the conference room or any other logistics for the next call. Again, these are in line with what we discussed in our earlier chapters.

Taking action items to completion: The action items that were committed to during a phone call should be taken to their logical conclusion. If other people or functions are to be involved in executing such action items, contact them soon enough and close the loop.

After completion, acknowledge the people who made it possible. Also, if you have a follow-up call, recognize this and document the completion in the minutes of that meeting/call.

Make sure you complete these telephonic action items according to the commitments that were made. If, for some unavoidable reason, you are unable to complete your committed action items in time, do inform the coordinator well ahead so as not to cause unpleasant surprises.

21.4 Taking a Phone Interview

With cross-border jobs and the hiring manager sitting in a different continent than the candidate, phone interviews today are more a rule than an exception. To do well in a phone interview, here are some additional suggestions over and above what we discussed in the last section:

• Always confirm the schedule of the interview beforehand and be present at the right time. If they are going to call you, make sure you are at the right number. If you have to call, make sure you have the right number to call. This may sound like trivial advice, but believe us, it is not at all unusual for such things to be overlooked.
• If the interviewers are in a different time zone, you should account for the time difference. You do not want to be doing a phone interview at 3 a.m., bleary eyed, because you didn’t factor in the time difference.
• As mentioned several times already, avoid distractions. Do not let anyone in your room during an interview.
• Dress up well for the phone interview. Even though no one will see you, it will give you a sense of professionalism and a feeling of how important the interview is.
• Make use of your body language because it can enhance your communication. However, as the person at the other end of the phone cannot see your body-language cues, make your voice reflect your body language (see Chapter 12).
• Keep your resume in front of you. Be prepared to explain any part of your resume.
• Prepare your answers for common questions ahead of time, and if you like, keep them readily accessible in soft copy or hard copy.
• Ask questions, as necessary, during the interview. For example, if it is not clear to you who the speaker is or what position they are considering you for seek clarifications upfront. During the interview, ask if something is not clear.
• Always close with questions about next steps. You can ask ‘Is there anything else you would like to know about me?’ and ‘When should I contact you next?’ or ‘When would I know of the next steps?’

21.5 Participating in a Phone Conference Call

International teleconference or conference calls that connect several people from across the globe are so commonplace that some people participate in several of them each day. Your effective and active participation in your conference calls is absolutely essential for the success of your career.

Conference calls should be treated exactly like face-to-face meetings. You discuss project status, take decisions, assign activities to team members and so on over the phone, much like you would in a sit-down meeting. Here too, it is important that the meeting agenda is set ahead of time and minutes are noted down and published, especially details about action items, owners and deadlines.

Though conference calls are similar in intent and direction to a group meeting, they present several unique challenges that you do not see in face-to-face meetings.

• When a number of people participate in a conference call from different locations around the world, it may be sometimes confusing to figure out who is talking.
• Accents can be very different, making understanding more difficult.
• The sound quality can be very poor and add to the confusion.
• Interruptions and responding right away can become tricky in a conference call and you may have to try a couple of times before you get yourself airtime.
• Time differences could reduce the focus of the participants who are participating in the call at what might be unearthly hours for them.

Some of the methods to overcome the above challenges are:

• Accents and diction can sometimes help identify people sometimes. See if you can tag people based on their accents.
• Make sure you have good multidirectional speaker phones to make it possible for people sitting in far corners of the room to be audible.
• If you have to dial in any of the participants to the call, make sure you take care of all the details.
• If the participants have to dial in themselves to a conferencing centre, email them the number to be dialled in and any identification mechanisms, such as meeting IDs and passwords.
• Make sure that all international attendees know the local time in your location by giving your time as an offset from GMT. Remember to account for seasonal clock changes and the switch to daylight-savings time in certain countries.
• When you dial in to the conference number, introduce yourself and where you are calling from. (‘Hi, this is Ajay from Bangalore.’) If there are multiple groups within Bangalore, identify your group as well.
• Speak even more deliberately and slowly than when you speak in person. Speak only when it is your turn, unless you have to interrupt to make a point.
• Whenever you speak, it is a good idea to keep reintroducing yourself several times in the call, just to make sure. (‘Hi, this is Ajay from Bangalore again.’)
• Do not be shy about asking a speaker to repeat or reaffirm things if you couldn’t hear or understand what he said. It is wiser and more effective to ask him to repeat and get a common understanding than making wrong assumptions.
• Be very patient with people who are not particularly articulate or phone-savvy and try to help them by paraphrasing sentences. (But be careful about putting wrong words into their mouths.)

21.6 In Summary

Phone communication is one of the most common, yet a very powerful channel of communication. Although it is now being extended to include data and multi-media channels, its primary role as a voice channel is still very dominant. Since we do not have body language to supplement voice communication during ordinary phone calls, we are somewhat limited in our efficiency of communication. However, in the hands of people who can compensate for the lack of body language, the phone becomes an extremely effective tool. In fact, given how much we communicate through phone, it is important that we cultivate our phone personality and come across as smart and effective in using the phone, especially in the context of international business communication.

And how do we master the phone medium and cultivate our phone personality? Here are a few tips:

• Be energetic, enthusiastic and vocal in your phone conversations.
• Modulate your voice and make it appealing to the other party.
• Follow all the protocols while making or receiving a business phone call, such as saying hello in the beginning and a hearty bye at the end and going through the various intermediate steps.
• Develop the art of small talk on phone. Make a few minutes of small talk a part of your business calls.
• Do active listening, which means producing appropriate vocal reaction to the person at the other end and empathizing with them.
• Talk in a back-and-forth manner, giving adequate pauses so that the other person can interrupt if needed.
• Be effective during conference calls, especially if you have participants situated in other countries. Speak clearly and with vocal variation so that the other person can understand you even if there are signal problems or language problems.
• When participating in phone interviews or conference calls, take notes.
• Treat conference call like face-to-face meetings and perform all action items assigned to you.
• End each phone calls on a high note so that the other party feels like talking to you again.
• And do not forget to say bye just before ending your call.