Don’t put me on hold!
I had a call today where I was asked to call someone for a 30 minute meeting. Although the meeting was casual in that what we were discussing was not critical, the fact that we had setup an actual meeting and it was our first time talking made it more important.
After chatting for about 5 minutes he asks me to hold. I wait about 30 seconds and he returns saying “Hey Will, I’m going to have to call you back. Can I call you back in 30 minutes?” Although this call could have been an emergency, this should be avoided at all costs. And the fact that he knew he could call me back in 30 minutes led me to believe that call he was electing to take instead was not all that urgent.
To put the cherry on top and what really gave me a horrible first impression, the gentleman never called me back. I received an email the next day asking to re-schedule and never received an explanation or an apology.
1. Don’t put someone on hold during a scheduled meeting – To me, its as if you were in a one on one office meeting and you told the person to hang out in your office while you went and talked to someone else. Would you do that?
2. Don’t tell someone you will call them back during a scheduled meeting – If this was a true emergency, I understand. Otherwise, this is unacceptable.
3. If this does happen and there is no way of avoiding it, make sure you call the person back!
