The Telephone Reflects a Hospital's Personality

How good are you at making friends and influencing people on the telephone?

The telephone is one of the greatest aids to modern living there is, and your future may be affected by how well you use it.

The telephone plays such an important part in relations between our institution, our patients, our outside contacts and ourselves that voice personality is often as important as your face-to-face personality.

What makes a good telephone personality? The rules are simple.

1. Answer promptly.
2. Speak directly into the mouthpiece in your natural tone of voice.
3. Be courteous.
4. Listen carefully; make the caller feel you are interested in what he has to say.
5. Don't tie up lines with personal calls.
6. Don't insist that the other guy get on the line first.
7. If a call is switched to your line accidentally, take the time to have it transferred promptly to the proper local. Don't just drop it.
8. If you take a call you can't handle satisfactorily or at once, take the caller's name and number and say he will be called back or refer him to the right person.

If you're observing these eight simple rules when you answer the phone, you're making friends for yourself and Beyer hospital.

--"Beyer Banner" newsletter from Ypsilanti's Beyer hospital, March 1954