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

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