Etiquette & good manners

The more we plunge into technicalities and so called modernization the more I find that good manners are being forgotten or discarded, and are instead replaced today by gruff and impolite behavior especially in business related telephone dealings.

As the world continues its speedy transformation into a more mechanized and highly technical arena, human behavior, in my view, seems to degenerate in business contacts. Driven by the erroneous concept that the application of any expedient or shortcuts is the key to success in business, natural politeness and good social etiquette fall in disusage. These patterns in communication are also transparent in email exchanges that are becoming less fashionable due to new twittering facilities. Differential behaviors are even more noticeable, and in some cases even striking, as one travels around in today's global society.

Above observations are reinforced almost daily. Lately I have had to deal a lot with services of all kinds that required quite a bit of phone calling. When one is lucky to eventually speak with a person, after going through mechanized responses of all sorts, one may also be put on hold for quite a long time, or loose the connection because the line is dropped after a while. Some of the respondents may rattle out incomprehensible answers, others may not offer further help in understanding the problem, or pursue a solution, and some even display aggressive manners in their responses.

Other behavioral differences in customer service are noticeable daily also in stores. One thing is to be serviced in a large city like NY (when you are lucky to get a salesperson's attention), another is when you are shopping in the country, away from the hassle and bustle of a metropolitan area. Greetings as you enter a shop are a norm in Europe, but not in NYC, although here, nowadays, there seems to be an effort of attitude change due to the more difficult economic times.

This reminds me that when I was a youngster, I came across a telephone etiquette guide that could be helpful to some people today [LOL]. It was a small booklet of simple examples and suggestions on how to answer a phone call. After many years of learning experiences I am still convinced that staff training is the name of the game for good business, but, unfortunately, today's employment practices have also shed such an effort.