(no subject)

[darchildre]

People who don't say hello after you've picked up the phone and said hello first confuse me.

Conversations have rules! There are reasons for those rules! You should follow them!

(Unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, of course. For example, if you are bleeding profusely and using the phone to get help, you obviously don't need to say hello. But if you're calling to find out if the library has a copy of a certain book, hello might be a nice beginning.)

Comments

[zanzando]

I usually answer the phone with "[surname], hello?", and when I'm calling someone, I go "Hello, this is [name], I'm calling to [purpose]."

It's not hard to do!

[silveradept]

Once we've acknowledged that this is the destination they want to call, more often than not, our users go straight into their question. Then again, we do prompt them to do so with a "How may we help you" sort of question, since that's what our etiquette demands.