“It’s a cultural thing,” I hear from my counterparts in the UK. Whether it’s how we speak or when we speak. How we respond, eat, drink, all the sense are covered. While there is much broken here, as everywhere, the Brits have advanced the art of communicating well beyond Americans.
One thing I’m seeing first hand and didn’t realize until I was here is that American business people don’t pick up their phones. “You have a culture of voicemail,” the Brits tell me. “Our contact rates in Europe are much higher.”
Every call I make in the UK, whether I reach the right person or not, someone picks up the phone, they are pleasant and attempt to be helpful. Here in Europe they have far more vacation days and they view August as one big holiday, but when they work, they work really well.
It is the infrastructure that more often fails them than the person. So getting our office phone system, hooked up has been a process of colossal delay, months of wait, and once installed the pipes don’t work.
Recently a package from the US was caught up in customs and I had to call the local DHL office to find out where it was. I call a number, a woman answers, she says she remembers my name from the paperwork. She tells me what to do and then to call back a few days later and make sure it cleared. I do what she asks and two days later I call the number on the envelope and again she picks up the phone and tells me they received my email and she will check on the status of my package.
“I’d love to help,” she says, “but my computer isn’t working at the moment. Can you call back again, I’ll be here.”http://expat-blog.com/
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