The Office: The Voice

Day 3 of the 31 for 21Challenge

Your brain is wired to process information in the first several seconds of encountering someone or something. You react instinctively - safe or not? Attractive or not? Trustworthy or not? Friendly or not? Worth $25.99 or not? Boom, boom, boom… an impression is formed that quickly.

I’ve read that the brain processes 400 billion bits of information in a second. I’ve also read 20 million billion. I’m not sure that it matters – they might even be the same number, I don’t know – but it’s obvious that your brain is taking in a lot of information in a very short time. And then it stores it. 

This is why we teach our first year Personal Development students how to make a good first impression. It’s why we’re careful to dress professionally for visitors in the front office. It’s why we select the type of people we do who make up our staff. Every second, we’re sending unspoken messages about who we are to everyone we encounter.

First impressions are important. They linger.  And many times, there is not going to be an opportunity to make a second impression. 

Your first impression of Shepherds College may very well have been a phone call to our main office. The voice you heard fired off all your billions of brain neurons and you made a decision about us immediately.

Now, I have, on occasion, answered the main line and I may owe some of you an explanation. I’m not a professional operator. I write most of the day and I can crawl pretty deep inside my head. I’m also fairly sure that the depth of my concentration interferes with my neural activity because I’ve answered the phone by saying, “Hi Honey,” “Good morning, Dairy Queen,” and “How can you help me?”  If you were the person on the other end of the line, please call back and let the real operator make a better first impression.

The real operator is Joy Bresson and she’s a great auditory representative of Shepherds.

She’s been answering phones for fifteen years. She knows how to handle multiple lines, even if four of them are ringing at the same time. If you’re the fourth call and she has the three others on hold, you will never know it by her tone of voice. She remains calm and good-natured.

If you need to talk to someone in the college, but don’t exactly know the right person to help you, Joy will patiently find the correct staff member for you.

Joy is also incredibly easy to talk to. I know this from years of sharing the back of the office with her.  She’s a natural listener who actually hears the person she’s talking to. Pertinent and caring questions always follow the conversation and she’ll remember the discussion days, weeks and months later. Staff share private matters with her, visitors open up about personal concerns and callers feel comfortable enough to talk to her about prayer issues and emotional struggles.

Joy, simply by doing her job with excellence, sends the message that Shepherds College is professional, competent, patient and caring.

If that’s what you feel about Shepherds College after one phone call, your first impression is accurate.

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.