Hello? Telephone…

Have you ever called a company or an institution, where the first few lines you heard when the person on the other side of the line answered, “Hello, company name”.

Here are some instances where I’ve experienced, and perhaps you should try.

Call UTAR, and you hear this first line, “Hello, UTAR”

Call Dell, and you hear, “Thank you for calling Dell.”

So you may ask, what’s the difference?

The both of them are grammatically sound, but they mean different things. How are they different?

How would you greet your friend? Say, “Hello Peter.” or “Hello Jane”. So if the person answering your call said “Hello UTAR”, it means that your name is UTAR, not Peter or Jane.

A lecturer once pointed this out to us during an English class and this funny line never failed to entertain me throughout the day. “The next time you call UTAR and the person answered ‘Hello, UTAR’, you should reply this instead, ‘I’m sorry, my name is not UTAR. I am Mike.’”

So I hope that the next time you’re answering calls, try to say something like “Thank you for calling company name, how can I assist you?” or “This is company name support/hotline, how can I help you?”

Happy calling.