Monday, August 18, 2014

Phone etiquettes

Hats off to the wonderful technology that has developed in communication that we are able to connect to anyone in the world with just the click of a few numbers on our phones! While some of us have to still upgrade from landline phones to mobile phones, majority of us are fancying around with the latest smartphones. However, while the technology has progressed a lot, yet the usage of this technology has to get more streamlined. Out of the many experiences that I have had with phone communication I would like to share certain phone etiquettes that we need to follow in order to make our communication better.


1. Never call a person repeatedly until s/he picks up the call unless it’s a dire emergency or a question of life and death. This is one of the most irritating things that can befriend you from the person whom you disturb this way. People are held up in driving or traffic or in washrooms or in some really important meetings when they cannot take calls. Such recurrent calls only waste your time and energy and create unnecessary tension on the receiver’s end.

2. When you call a person and the person has not reverted by picking up the call, then make sure to drop a message so that at least the subject of conversation is known to the receiver. This information helps him/her to take a priority to call you back. If your missed call is not backed up by a message then the chances of getting called back also reduces.

3. If there’s some urgency that you need to talk at that moment apart from any emergency mentioned in the abovementioned point, then give at max 2-3 calls only but not more than that. Drop a message that it’s extremely urgent for the person to revert to you. Still, if you don’t receive the call then find out another way to solve your situation by yourself or just wait until the person reverts to you.

4. If there are none of the urgencies mentioned above and if it’s just for some information or casual talk, then give a call half an hour later after the first missed call followed by the message if you haven’t got back the call from the person you intended to call within half an hour. Give a reminder call of just 1 or 2 more for that day and not more than that.

5. When you are calling people in high positions during office hours, it’s always better to send a message requesting if you could call the person. You might receive a Yes/No message or a call itself. This will show that you respect and value other person’s time.

6. Online messengers have completely cut our costs on SMS. Hence updating the status of work over online messengers with your reporting authorities will always cut down call costs and help in better and consistent reporting equipping faster communication. I have used Viber, WeChat, Hike, Line, Facebook messenger, Google hangouts and Whatsapp, and I have found Whatsapp as the best online messenger which is light on phone in terms of CPU and memory usage. Also, Whatsapp notifies you only if there’s any incoming message from your contacts while there are no advertisements or other messages from the app that unnecessarily disturb you.


These are some of the etiquettes I believe which shall enhance our phone communication. If you have anything to share about the same please feel free to share.

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