Member-only story
How many times have you heard this on the phone?
“Good morning, (rapid garbled speech), how may I assist you?”
Or this?
“Hi, this is (rapid garbled speech) from (rapid garbled speech), how are you doing today?”
Before I give you a solution to this problem, let me tell you a relevant story.
Several years ago I was in a restaurant with a colleague named Brian. It was a quick lunch stop at a restaurant by an Interstate. Nothing fancy, but good food if you’re willing to ignore your cholesterol levels for the day. Our server was busy, rapid, and efficient — except for one annoying thing: whenever she topped off my coffee, she invariably sloshed coffee over the side of the cup. She sometimes even got coffee on the table.
Brian said, “What a terrible server! She should be fired.”
“No, she shouldn’t,” I replied. “She’s not a bad server. The problem is, she has a bad manager.”
“What do you mean?”
I continued. “She’s doing a lot of great stuff. She greeted us quickly after we sat down. She brought water and menus right away. She got our orders exactly correct, and delivered our food to the table while it was still hot. Some places, the server never comes back by…