Telephone Professionalism
Developing effective telephone skills is essential to many positions.
The way you handle the telephone reflects on your company/department and you.
Features of good telephone etiquette
- greeting callers
- answer call promptly- within 3 or 4 rings preferable
- using polite greeting
- identifying the enterprise
- identity yourself using ‘This is’ and name
- offer of assistance
- courteous language
- friendly tone
- clear articulation
- accurate relaying of messages.
Operation of telephone systems including:
- accepting external calls
- connecting internal and external calls
- transferring calls to extensions
- placing callers on hold
- Paging.
The range of telephone equipment including:
- single and multiline telephones
- mobile telephones
- switchboards
- extensions
- answering machines.
Here a few tips for the telephone:
- Try to become interested in what the caller has to say
- Use clients name whenever possible to personalise call
- Always smile when on the telephone as it will show up in your voice
- We will discuss customer service call handling skills
- Calling from the customers phone - experiencing your business from your customers perspective
- Learn how the telephone affects communication
- How do you sound? Use vocal tonality correctly
- Controlling the call. The speed, length and ending
- Learn call handling skills - questioning, listening and summarising
- Ensuring accuracy and minimising mistakes
- Use language positively to create positve customers
- Passing calls to other areas of the business correctly
- Handling difficult callers
To view our customer service courses please click here. To return to Information Menu click here.

