In this lesson, you will take a look back on the previous four lessons: email English, giving information, taking part in conference calls, and telephone etiquette.
Recall the previous four lessons:
- Email English
- Giving and receiving information over the phone
- Taking part in conference calls
- Telephone etiquette
Which do you feel you need more practice with?
A. Examine the telephone conversations below. What errors do you see? What would you say instead?
- A: How are you doing?
B: Not much, how are you?
- A: Hello?
B: Hello, my name is Ted Nakagawa from the S.B.D. company I'm calling because I need to speak with Mr Roberts regarding the upcoming meeting.
- A: Good morning, Y and U Offices, how may I help you?
B: Hello, this is Allan, how are you?
B. You received this email from a client:
Hello ----,
I hope your week is starting well.
This is just an update to let you know we have gathered all the historical sales data you requested. It is in physical form, unfortunately. But it's awaiting pickup at your convenience. I suppose that will be at our scheduled meeting at the end of the week.
Looking forward to it.
-Stan Gordon
- You would actually like to get the documents ASAP. How would you go about doing that? Quickly draft an email in response.
- You replied to the above email in the morning but haven't gotten a response. It's now 4:30 PM and you know the client office closes at 5:00 PM. Call the office to follow up.
C. You are the project leader on an international project to help a company make the jump to automation. You are collaborating with the San Francisco office.
- Tim is an associate in charge of doing a fact-finding mission. He's currently at the factory.
- Ken is an IoT expert in San Francisco.
- You are client-side at the head office.
- Hitoshi is the managing partner.
You and Hitoshi have been working on negotiations because the client has been requesting an increase in the scope—they want to apply the automation principles more broadly—without increasing the budget. You've been trying to keep a positive relationship while maintaining the scope.
Be sure to start your answer quickly and not leave any pauses that would let others think you are finished.
You: ...
Tim: Hey guys, Tim here at the factory. It's a bit noisy. How's this connection?
Ken: Hey Tim, sounds fine to me.
You: ...
Tim: So here at the factory, it's pretty much exactly as hypothesized. The bottleneck issues are mostly due to aging machinery, and we have to get someone in to see if the machines will integrate. So, yea. What we thought.
You:
Ken: Here in San Fran, everything's on track. I'm working with some of the IoT experts client-side. I'll let you know when our findings are ready to present.
You: ...
Tim: Sorry to cut in. Tim here again. I've got to be honest, I'm at full bandwidth. I don't know what they expect me to do.
You: ...
Ken: So, moving forward, what's the game plan?
You: ...