How to Make Business Phone Calls in English

It can be quite difficult talking on the phone in English. Even native speakers have problems sometimes! The stress caused by having to think as you speak, a bad connection or the general pressure at work can all add up to making phone calls a nightmare. Here are some tips on making better calls in your job and some key phrases you can use.

Phoning at the Right Time

Is this a good time to talk? – Use this phrase at the beginning of your call to check if it’s convenient for the other person to speak. They might reply “Yes, this is the perfect moment” (if you’re lucky). If someone calls you and it’s not a great time, you can say “Hm, I’m a bit busy right now” and suggest a different time to talk. “Can I call you back later?” or “Can we touch base next week?” Touch base is a US English expression from baseball. It means to make contact or communicate with someone.

Saying Why You are Calling

Don’t leave the other person guessing what your call is about! Say immediately why you’re calling: “I’m calling about the event next week. I need to agree on some planning details with you”. This is just like when you write an email and say WHY you are writing at the beginning of your message. (If you don’t do that, you should!) Of course, if the topic is something sensitive (not “delicate”), you might want to prepare the other person before you go into detail about the issue. “Listen, something has cropped up. We need to discuss the next phase of the project”. “Crop up” is a really typical British English expression. It’s a phrasal verb that means “appear” / “start” / “become apparent, usually with something negative: “A problem with the original plan has cropped up. We need to talk about it”.

Connection Problems

As we talk more than ever before on mobile phones (known as cell phones in US English) and in remote meetings, we also seem to spend an increasing amount of time dealing with bad phones and patchy internet connections. (Patchy means that you keep losing the connection.) You can say (or shout) “It’s really difficult to hear you” or “It’s a really bad line”. You might tell the other person: “Hang up and I’ll call you back”. There, you’ve got two phrasal verbs in one short sentence. “Hang up” means to end the call “riagganciare”. If you “call someone back,” it means you phone them again. Some other expressions we use when there is a poor connection are “You’re breaking up” (the sound is distorted because you keep losing the signal). You might also say “There’s a really bad noise / a crackling noise on the line”. The key thing here is to tell the other person you will contact them again immediately, or when you can get better phone reception / a better internet connection.

Ending Your Call

Some phone calls never seem to end! Here’s a useful tip: if a native English speaker pauses and says “Well…” or “Right…” that means the call is finished. We often use the word “Anyway” to signal that the call is about to end.

“Anyway, it was good to talk to you. Send me the summary of the meeting, and I’ll get back to you next week with my suggestions.”

Try and avoid restarting the conversation just as you are hanging up: it’s a sort of Italian habit that is initially charming but can become slightly annoying. (I’m only joking.) When you end your call, say “(It was) good talking to you” or “Talk to you again next week”. You can use a general expression like “Stay in touch” or “Keep in touch”. This is an invitation to keep communicating. In British English, we often end an informal phone call with the expression “Take care”. This is really just the equivalent of the Italian phrase “In bocca al lupo.” You can reply, “You too.”

Article by Robert Dennis for Easy Milano

Robert Dennis is a writer and Business English teacher based in Milan. He has been teaching for over 30 years both in the UK and in Italy. A long-time collaborator with John Peter Sloan, Robert published Business English (Gribaudo) in 2020. The book was launched with “Il Sole 24 Ore” and sold in newsstands throughout Italy. Robert has a website for people who want to learn Business English: PayAsYouLearn.com. The site features keywords and phrases, audio and exercises to help professionals improve their language skills. A graduate in English from Oxford University, Robert is a regular contributor to Easy Milano who often writes about plays staged in English in Milan and other cultural events in the city. He is also a translator and “buongustaio” who loves Italian food! robertdennis.it