Working in a call center, I can definitely agree that you don’t need to know the proper NATO phonetic alphabet, because ‘A as in apple’ and ‘M as in Mary’ work just as well.
But I do wish more people would say something to that effect because I lose more than 3 seconds every day to ‘Did you say N or M’ while on the phones.
I picked up the NATO alphabet while working in a callcenter. I also picked up that most customers can’t figure out what the heck you mean by “address it to Fort Worth spell Foxtrot Oscar Romeo Tango Whiskey Oscar Romeo Tango Hotel” so I shifted to only spelling sound-a-like letters phonetically “address it to Ashwaubenon spelled A-S-H-W-A-U-B as in Bravo-E-N as in Nancy-O-N as in Nancy”
100% this is the way. For short words I’ll just spell it out and then do it in NATO such as ‘That’s Via benefits, V-I-A Victor India Alpha’ and that also seems to register with them.
Working in a call center, I can definitely agree that you don’t need to know the proper NATO phonetic alphabet, because ‘A as in apple’ and ‘M as in Mary’ work just as well.
But I do wish more people would say something to that effect because I lose more than 3 seconds every day to ‘Did you say N or M’ while on the phones.
I picked up the NATO alphabet while working in a callcenter. I also picked up that most customers can’t figure out what the heck you mean by “address it to Fort Worth spell Foxtrot Oscar Romeo Tango Whiskey Oscar Romeo Tango Hotel” so I shifted to only spelling sound-a-like letters phonetically “address it to Ashwaubenon spelled A-S-H-W-A-U-B as in Bravo-E-N as in Nancy-O-N as in Nancy”
100% this is the way. For short words I’ll just spell it out and then do it in NATO such as ‘That’s Via benefits, V-I-A Victor India Alpha’ and that also seems to register with them.