Telephone Manners Essay

best practice a clear part of your customer service development programme and include the telephone manners you expect from your people when they are dealing with customers.
What can make the difference?
Good call handling skills and embedded customer service best practice will of course make the difference. But ask a customer and they’ll tell you “simple manners go a long way”
In fact, calls are often “won or lost” in the first 30 seconds. Click here to
Good first impressions
Call are often “won or lost” in the first 30 seconds. Click here to download a useful article on creating the right first impression.
Try a verbal handshake - its good manners
A verbal handshake can make all the difference.
"Good morning, XYZ Co, can I take your name please?"
"James Bond"
"Thank you, how would you like me to address you as James or Mr Bond?"
"James is fine,"
"OK James, you are through to Em, how can I help you today?"
Taking Phone Messages
Think of the person the message is for, what will they need to know to be able to help this customer easily and effectively?
Using a message will usually include:-
Caller's name ( using the phonetic alphabet to check spellings if it's an unusual name )
Telephone number or the best way to contact them - make sure the telephone number is repeated back for accuracy
Date & Time of the call
Message, which might also include any details of the best time to contact the customer, or an indication of the urgency of why they are calling to reach your co-worker
Call transfers
It is in call transfers that good customer service practices and manners become essential. Handing over a call well and with courtesy is good for the customer, colleagues and inter-departmental relationships.
What needs to happen?
Letting the customer / caller know that while they are being put on hold the call agent will explain the details of their call / query, to the co-worker they will be transferring the call to.
The person taking over the call needs to summarise well their understanding of the reason for the call.
This makes for a joined up customer experience.
Dealing under pressure
When a new product is launched, there are operational issues, invoices / bills have just been sent out, and call traffic is high, customer service personnel can become frazzled.
Agents may let off steam by talking about customers being rude. It's important that call agents understand their job is to lead the way even on the most difficult calls with the most difficult customers. If the call agent sets the standard of communication and tone, the majority of people respond.
If you find that there are members of your team who seem to have to deal with more angry customers than their colleagues. they may be triggering that anger. Review some of those calls with them - what happened that brought the customer's frustration to the surface?
The Intelligent Dialogue team have just published a free Go To Guide to Helping Angry Customers, which is well worth a look at. You can get your copy by clicking here
“Please”, “thank you”, and using the appropriate form of the customer's name, are all a given where telephone manners are concerned, as should be a helpful tone and attitude.
Ideas for exploring telephone manners in customer service training
Use real calls; play back real calls with real customers to the agents who made them. Call coaching done well, can make a huge difference. Why? Because the agent hears how they sound to customers, and can identify for themselves what they do well and might also do differently.
Make mystery shopping calls and ask your people to evaluate them. By asking the agents to consider the call from the customer's perspective, you can use this to explore what makes an agent sound helpful or rude, interested or disinterested.