陳豪在北京的ABC美國公司工作，他的美國同事Amy來找他談事兒。

(Office ambience)

A：Hi Chen Hao, have you got a minute?
C：Amy, 剛才你過來的時候，我正在電話上。

A：It's not polite to hang around when someone is the phone so I decided to come back.
C：嗨，別提了。我剛才一直在電話上等。想掛，可是好不容易才打通，掛了又得從頭來，我就在那兒傻等著，煩死了。

A：I know what you mean. Putting callers on hold for more than thirty seconds is bad for customer relations.
C：半分鐘，別說半分鐘；我剛才足足等了半小時。不過，Amy, 說實話，我讓別人等的時候，有時候也容易把時間忘了。What can I do?

A：Watch the clock. Time passes quickly for the person who is busy with other callers or issues, but for the person on hold, time creeps by.
C：就是這么回事。在電話上等，確實覺得時間過得特別慢，所以越等越不耐煩。

A：Since your job doesn't involve answering other people's calls, I would guess that your callers are waiting for you to look up information while they hold.
C：沒錯，一般情況下，我都會讓客戶在電話上等著別掛，我馬上設法幫他們解決問題。

A：There is a difference in holding for someone to answer the phone and holding for someone to look up information for you.
C：在線上等別人接你的電話和等別人去幫你查資料有什么不一樣呢？

A：If you ask people to hold while you are looking up information or trying to help them in some way, they are willing to wait.
C：我怎么還是不明白？

A：People are happy to wait while you work on their behalf.
C：噢，他們知道對方是在為自己解決問題，所以等得心甘情愿。那些等著別人接聽電話的人呢？

A：When you take your time getting to the call, the caller starts to imagine all sorts of scenarios.
C：沒錯，我就經常懷疑對方是把我給忘了。

A：The caller may suspect you don't think the caller is important.
C：還有呢？

A：Maybe you don't value the caller's time?
C：對呀，在線上等電話是越等越急，越急就容易胡思亂想。

A：Yes, and the result is that your caller is pretty annoyed when you finally answer the phone.
C：沒錯，那客戶肯定很不高興，覺得我沒有禮貌。

A：Exactly. So if you want to avoid making people feel unimportant or ignored, pick up your phone as soon as you know you have a caller waiting.
C：如果沒辦法馬上接電話，我通常都會讓秘書請客戶決定，是在線上繼續等，還是在電話信箱里留言。

A：Exactly, good business etiquette as usual is to be considerate of the other person.