陈豪在北京的ABC美国公司工作。他在走廊上遇到了美国同事Amy。

(Office ambience)

C：Amy, 你有时间吗?

A：Sure. What’s up?

C：我刚才收到部门经理Mae的电话留言，她说我们在留言机上的留话千篇一律，应该考虑如何改变一下。

A：I haven’t checked my voice mail yet. I havebeen out of the office so I haven’t heard hermessage.

C：我简单告诉你一下吧?

A：I’m all ears!

C：她建议，我们不用说，“我不在办公室或是正在另外一条线上”，因为你不说，别人也知道。

A：What are we supposed to say?

C：不如改为告诉对方你在哪里，比如说去开会了，三点回来，让别人知道几点钟能找到你，或是能接到你的回电。

A：I always try to let people know when I am away from the office for a few days.

C：对了，Mae还建议，如果好几天不在办公室的话，可以在留言里说明，你什么时候有机会查留言，回电话。

A：Did she say more?

C：Mae还说，如果你不在办公室，可以把临时联络人的电话和姓名留在留言机里。

A：I’ve had people do that and when I called the other person, she wasn’t in so I foundmyself in another voice mail. That’s annoying.

C：没错，所以要事先弄清楚临时联络人是否会在办公室里。Mae还有不少建议，我一时记不起来了，你还是自己去听听吧。

******

当天晚些时候。陈豪和Amy又见面了。

A：Wow, Mae made some other good points about our greetings. I get tired of hearing"Your call is very important to me." I agree that we should drop that phrase, especially when itoften lacks sincerity.

C：对啊，“你的电话对我很重要”根本就是废话。还有就是“我很遗憾没有接到你的电话 -- "I am sorry Imissed your call." 有那个时间，还不如说点有用的。

A：I usually tell people that I will call them back as soon as possible. Mae says to avoidsaying, "I’ll call you back as soon as possible." A simple "I’ll call you back" is all that is needed.

C：你觉得Mae说的有道理吗?

A：It’s clear to me that we all have fallen into a rut, by leaving a greeting that sounds as ifwe are reading from a script.

C：确实是有些千篇一律。那我们应该怎么做呢?

A：What we need to do is update our greeting on a regular basis so callers know that weare attentive to our message system.

C：我们还应该保证尽快回电。

A：But we don’t need to take up more time than necessary.

C：好，我这就去改我的电话留言，就说 "Hello, this is Chen Hao. I will be in the office today.Please leave a message and I will call you back.”

A：Sounds good to me.