Telephone and video consultations have become a prominent part of practice in the pandemic, bringing undoubted benefits but also some challenges. Due to the inability to examine patients or read their body language, successful remote consulting may call for some adjustments to the normal way of talking with patients. Here, Dr Roger Neighbour OBE, retired GP from Hertfordshire and a past President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, considers how to prepare for and begin a remote consultation, describing a simple seven-stage approach to clinical problem-solving: getting the story, doing the clinical work, and agreeing the management plan. It encourages you to think aloud as a way of keeping the patient involved, and offers some advice on bringing the conversation to a close.