Telephone Etiquette

exp date isn't null, but text field is

  • Telephone etiquette means being respectful to the person you are talking with and showing empathy.
  • Good telephone etiquette is important as
    • You cannot see facial expressions and body language of the caller
    • Caller cannot see the person they are communicating with.

Telephone communication techniques

  • Answer the phone as quickly as possible (before the third ring).
  • Answer all calls with a warm and friendly greeting.
  • Offer assistance, “How may I help you?” “What is your emergency”.
  • Identify who the caller is and use the caller’s name.
  • Ask for the caller contact number and an alternative number, explain why their contact number is needed
  • Be polite, use “please” and “thank you.”
  • Listen to the caller, acknowledge requests or concerns.
  • Listen without interrupting but guide the caller if the caller is giving unnecessary information
  • Be pleasant and interesting (don’t allow caller to think you are bored).
  • Appreciate a person’s time and respect it as valuable. Always make the other person feel important.
  • Avoid being arrogant, even if you are asked silly questions.
  • Take time with everyone and do not rush someone off the phone. You want to encourage them to give you all necessary information that you may need

Catch of the Day Activity

  • Reflect on the calls that you received on a particular day
  • Indicate one call which made you the happiest and one calls that you felt was stressful
  • What made you happy on this particular call
    • What were your feelings?
  • What stressed you
    • What were your feelings?
    • What did do after the call?

Methods of Handling a Call

  • Never drop an emergency call. Rather take all details and call an appropriate agency with information

Basic Skills that Call Taker Can Use

  • Call centre Agent needs the following basic skills to effectively communicate with caller:
  • Attending.
    • Attending refers to the ways in which agents can be “with” their clients, both physically and psychologically. ...
    • Good attending behavior demonstrates that you respect a person and are interested in what he/she has to say.
    • The effect of attending is an encouragement to the person to go on talking about his/her ideas or feelings freely. Without using words, you are communicating that you are listening to the person
  • Rapport building
    • Build rapport when you develop mutual trust, friendship and empathy with someone.
    • Building rapport with your caller is one of the most important communication skill to possess.
      • Did you know that callers change is due to the quality of the counseling relationship?
    • Get callers to trust you and feel comfortable on the phone.
    • If you don’t, callers won’t
      • Share important details with you
      • Trust what you say
      • Participate in the communication process in the way that you need them to.
  • Silence
    • It provides space for the in between moments for client reflection of what has been said.
    • It challenges caller to take responsibility.
    • It gives the caller time to think about what they want to say.
  • Reflecting
    • When an agent uses reflection, s/he accurately describes the client's affective state from either verbal or nonverbal cues.
    • By listening and responding to the feelings of the caller rather than the content of their statement you are communicating that you can accurately sense the world as they are perceiving it.
  • Probing
    • Asking follow-up questions
    • When you do not fully understand a response,
    • When answers are vague or ambiguous
    • When you want to obtain more specific or in-depth information.
  • Focusing
    • Is particularly useful after one or two sessions
    • When the agent has heard the client's story.
    • Focusing involves making decisions about what issues the client wants to deal with.
  • Summarising - is an important skill.
    • It enables you to extract the most important points from a text and rewrite them in your own words, in a shortened form.
    • Being able to write a good summary also demonstrates that you have fully understood the text you are reading.
    • A good summary of an essay should probably include the main idea of each paragraph, and the main evidence supporting that idea, unless it is not relevant to the article or essay as a whole. A summary does not need a conclusion, but if the original ends with a message to the reader this should not be left out.

Exercise – Active listening

  • The aim of this activity is to practice the skill of active listening.
    • Divide participants into pairs. Have one act as the caller, the other as the call taker.
    • The counselor will practice active listening.
    • After 5 minutes, have the pairs switch roles and start again.
    • Have each group discuss and describe moments when they felt the call taker was “listening to them” during the exercise.
    • Ask participants to share their experience with the others .
    • List the examples of “active listening” on the flip chart