Are Telephone Techniques Really That Important?

Anyone can pick up the phone. How you answer is what keeps that other person on the line – instead of calling the competition. For this reason, your business phone is often your customers’ first point of contact with your business. Make it count!

You might think that getting around a strange town in search of a five-star hotel is frustrating, but it is nothing compared with having to rebuild a business reputation. Surprisingly, good etiquette on the telephone is extremely important to the success of your business. Ninety per cent of consumers won’t use the services of a company again after having a bad customer service experience on the phone. And 12 positive customer service experiences are needed to make up for one unresolved negative experience with your telephone company.

Keeping that in mind, good telephone techniques can help you to take care of your customers better, whether you run a medical office, a funeral home, or an HVAC business, because this is often one of the first instances that requires your use of your answering service. After business hours, when no one from your regular staff is available to pick up the phone and take your calls, you run the risk of the decision-maker not receiving your message if your calls go through your operator’s answering machine.

Top Techniques for Effective Telephone Use

Positive tone of voice

Modulation of tone is probably the single most important topic one can concentrate on in writing in a call centre or answering service. Note that, unlike in a normal mind-to-mind communication, in which people can perceive each other’s body language, tone of voice is the only real indication callers have of the attitudinal state of the operator at the other end of the line.

It vegetables the caller and a quick pleasant salutation provides a good start for entire the phone calls.
On the other hand, answered in a hurry or bad temper mountain the course of the conversation.

Say your interlocutor is a patient who called in with an emergency, or a homeowner who called in with a crisis. Whatever happens during the call, the last thing you want is for the other person to become even more anxious. Make sure you always speak to your customers in a positive and empathetic way.

Clear pronunciation

Indeed, proper pronunciation will ensure that the interlocutor can grasp everything that is said. When you happen to be talking to a female telephone operator who talks too fast or too slowly, or who simply speaks too softly to be easily discerned, you know, better than I can explain, the suffering that lack of pronunciation can inflict on an interlocutor.

As you are in conversation, you will need to measure your pace according to the preferred speed of your interlocutors. Speaking, on average, there is a normal pace at 125 words per minute. All conversations with whose pace falls within this spectrum (ex. 75/125/175 words per minute) tend to be welcoming and satisfactory for all callers. Slow pace below 125 words per minute will bore people, and faster pace above 125 words per minute may imply impatience.

Additionally, when a caller is unable to understand his call operator, he will spend less time on his original call goal Second, good pronunciation has a direct impact on communication, where ‘clearer speech can make the difference between efficient and confused conversation’.

Sincerity

Callers place their trust in agents who seem right from the start to be genuinely there to answer their problem. A good telephone agent is genuine, caring and empathetic.

People might call your company looking for general tips or, at a more tender moment in their life, looking for something different. But whether a caller simply wants tips or finds themselves on the line at a critical time in their life, they’re looking for the same thing: someone who is capable of making them feel better.

The caller’s problem probably won’t be solved on the phone. But an experienced telephone agent will note down the details and forward them to those better equipped to solve the problem, helping to move the caller one step closer to a solution.

Engagement

Even though not every call is a crisis or emergency, even the most routine ones, trained professional operators will be able to get drawn in to every call, and as such, be ready to deal with every crisis call that comes their way, even if many of the incoming calls seem routine at first.

In taking a call, you get to talk to your customer yourself, and that customer will feel heard, which means that she is more likely to believe that she will get her problem solved in her interactions with the customer care department – and be satisfied with your company.

Improve caller engagement by:

• Preparation
• Identification
• Focusing
• Repeating
• Aggregate
• Thank

Active listening

Active-listening is an important part of communications skills. If your operators listen to your customers well, the customers will feel that their issues are reasonable.

Active listening has four components they include:

• Taking Note
• Convince
• Question
• Bounce

These four basic parts of listening will maintain good conversations, and improve customer satisfaction.

Content clients come back and may even recommend your company to friends and family. In other words: content clients means more money for you!

Going beyond receiving the message

It is both about taking and relaying that message to the company in a way that improves caller satisfaction for both the caller and the company, but also about providing compassionate and professional customer service.

Call operators speaking when being called should sound like the company. In that momentary interaction, you will be representing the brand in full, and will be held accountable for any impression left with interlocutors. These impressions persist, and if they are managed right, your career and your company will benefit.

Key points

Use these skills of assertive communication in your call centre or workplace and promote healthy customer service in your organisation!

If you use a tone that is upbeat, communicated through clear language, convey honesty and integrity and make a commitment to listen, to your customers you will create an immeasurable feeling of satisfaction and happiness, the kind of customers that will stay with your business, and customers that are most likely to spread the word about your business to friends and family.