How to Win a Telephone Tag Game

You need to reach a Very Important Person. Or even a Not-So-Important-Person. So you take a deep breath, push the buttons, and then. . . .

He is in a meeting.

Or she just stepped out.

Or will get back to you. (Maybe.)

Anyone who thinks we live in an age of instant gratification doesn’t spend much time trying to reach people on the phone. Those who do, know that what should be a five-minute transaction can take hours or even days.

To avoid the hassle of missed messages and returning returned calls, some professional phone-a-holics resort to drastic measures.

There’s the record promoter, for instance, who makes a practice of answering the secretarial screening query “and what is this regarding?” with an ominous “it’s regarding . . . his career.” He generally gets through.

And another executive, not known for his charm, who found an effective method of last resort in announcing himself with “this is his doctor, calling with the test results.”

Without flouting the rules of telephone etiquette, experts and constant callers say you can improve your chances of cutting through the telephone tangle by observing a few basic techniques.

Know the Schedule

The first rule of lessening frustration, they note, is simply knowing the schedule of the type of person you’re trying to reach. Are you calling New York in the summer? Then forget about getting through on Fridays or Mondays, when most everyone’s at the Hamptons. Is the person you’re trying to reach overworked? Try calling after 5 p.m. or so, when receptionists have gone home and their bosses are left to answer their own phones.

Getting through to someone Monday morning can be hard, because everyone else is trying to do the same thing. The busiest time in Southern California for business calls, according to Pacific Bell, is Monday between 9 and 11 a.m.

“I try not to call on Mondays--or Fridays, if I have any serious business,” says TV writer Eric Estrin, who spends a lot of time on the phone when he’s not on deadline. “If I just want to chat, Friday is a good time.”

Gregory Poe, a Los Angeles fashion designer with a business based in Japan, leads two 8-hour phone days because 5 p.m. here is the beginning of the day there. But it’s a day that doesn’t necessarily correspond to ours. “They’re killer bees there,” Poe says. “A lot of people in the (Japanese) fashion industry stay up till 2 or 3 a.m., stagger home from the bars, get up at 7, and then work until 7 at night.”

With the Los Angeles garment trade, Poe finds things more predictable. “I know everyone’s time clock at this point,” he says. “Creative people are better to reach later in the day. At 8 a.m. I can get a lot of sales reps. Most of the California Mart is very 9 to 5. And 10 a.m. is when store executives generally come in.”

Even within Southern California, phone availability varies according to location. Maura Eggan, director of marketing for the South Coast Plaza shopping center in Costa Mesa, estimates she sometimes spends three consecutive hours on the phone. “Here in Orange County,” she says, “offices open at 8 a.m., unlike L.A., so early morning is a good time to reach people.”

Perhaps this is an echo of the area’s up-with-the-roosters farm background. While 1 p.m. is when Los Angeles executives generally leave for lunch, Eggan notes that “here lunch at noon is sacrosanct--in fact, 12:30 is considered just a little bit dissipated. I finally persuaded one friend to stop trying to meet for lunch at 11:30.”

People irritated by telephone tag often complain about calls returned at lunch, when the caller knows they are out but still wants credit for returning the call.

Irritating the Callee

But lunch can also be a good time to reach someone in the habit of grabbing a sandwich at his desk. That strategy can backfire, though, by irritating the callee.

A. Michael Noll, a USC communications professor who’s done research on telephone topics such as picture phones and video phone conferencing, doesn’t mind being called at home early in the morning--he’s accepted the fact that he spends so much time on the phone that “one ear is permanently flattened to my head.”

But he takes exception to being interrupted at lunch, even when it’s just a quick bite in the office. “I take a more sacred attitude toward food than anything else,” he says. “Sleep is another matter.”

Similarly, after-hours calls to the office can be effective--things have quieted down and secretaries are gone--but they can make callees wonder if you have a low opinion of their social life.

“For some reason, I used to be sitting around at (20th-Century) Fox at 7:30 p.m., and I’d get these calls,” says John De Simeo, an entertainment publicist who now works at the film production company, Castle Rock, “and I’d always think: how did they know I’m here? “

Maybe they know because they’ve made it their business to know. Big players in especially phone-intensive lines of work sometimes get this down to a fine art.

Elaine Young, a partner in the Beverly Hills real estate firm of Alvarez, Hyland and Young, starts her phone day at 6:30 a.m., beginning with calls to Europe and New York.” Doctors are almost always in their offices unless they’re seeing patients,” she says briskly. “Psychiatrists, you call 10 minutes to the hour. Lawyers, you have to know that court gets out at 4, so they’re usually in the office from 4:30 to 6:30. Bankers keep bankers’ hours: 9 to 4.

Entertainment Industry

“With wealthy women who don’t work,” she continues, “you have to be careful you don’t call before 10. And the entertainment industry is really easy, because everyone has a personal manager, a business manager, an attorney and an accountant. So you always reach one of them. The only thing that’s hard is to get a movie star on the phone in person.”

But opinions vary on how easy it is to reach people in Hollywood. “In fashion, you can always get hold of somebody eventually,” says Poe, who also does costume designing. “Not the film industry. The best time to call them is really early, around 7 or 8 a.m.”

If how hard you are to reach is a measure of status, so is the way you can be reached. Car phones, of course, add greatly to phone one-upmanship. A popular way of letting someone know he’s talking to you on a car phone is with the remark, “Excuse me, could you repeat that? I’m going through a canyon.” This is also useful when someone’s saying something you’d rather not hear.

But if you’re initiating the call, leaving an impression of kindness and courtesy may be more effective. Suzanne Marx, national campaign chairman of the planned Nancy Reagan Center for drug abuse treatment, sometimes spends six hours a day on her phone at home in Encino where dozens of business cards taped to a desk top help organize calls.

Generally, people call her back quickly, though sometimes they are stymied by her lack of call waiting. Her secret? “In fund raising,” she says, “the first thing you learn is always get the secretary’s name. Boy, that is No. 1. I know every secretary by name and I always chitchat a while, because the executive secretary is key to the gentleman. And if you get off to a bad start, they won’t put your call through. Even at hotels, I find out the operator’s name and follow up with thank-you notes.”

Actress Colleen Camp, who has a car phone and three lines at home with her husband, MGM executive John Goldwyn, also makes a point of being pleasant to assistants. “And I always try to sound on the phone as if I’m talking in person,” says Camp, who uses endearments like honey and sweetheart even with casual acquaintances. “I make them feel as if we’re having dinner together.”

Intimacy of Telephone

The telephone lends itself to such intimacy, Noll of USC notes, because “you are whispering in someone’s ear.” Movie publicist De Simeo echoes this thought. “I’m soft-spoken,” he says, “and the telephone is a great medium for me, because it’s like talking right into the person’s brain.”

Speakerphones, naturally, destroy that. Noll says that “whenever someone calls me on one I say, ‘Did you fall into a barrel?’ Or, ‘Are you in the bathroom?’ They usually get off right away.”

No matter how frustrating it is trying to reach someone who doesn’t especially want to be reached, not giving up can pay off. Real estate agent Young avoids seeming too pushy by trying again rather than leaving her name with a receptionist. “Or if I do leave my name,” she adds, “I cover myself by saying, ‘I’ll probably be out this afternoon showing houses, so I’ll call him.’ That way they won’t be so mad if I call back twice in one day.”

But she’s not fazed by people who don’t seem to want to hear from her. “I keep calling even when I think they’re avoiding me,” she says. In what may set a record for phone persistence, Young once called someone once a week for eight years in order to get a real estate listing. “I knew eventually the house would be for sale,” she says. “I got the listing, and it was my first sale with this office.”