Telephone Skills Training: The Structure of an Effective Telephone Call

Every phone contact is important and training your staff to handle every call professionally and effectively is essential. Telephone skills training should be done in short sessions on an ongoing basis. Refresher training is good for everyone.

The objectives of the training

The purpose of the training is twofold:

1. Update our purpose with the callers and our goals with every phone call.

2. Refresh our skills on every call from start to finish.

The goal is to clarify the student’s focus and increase their awareness of effective use of skills on each call.

When looking at the call itself, the call structure is a great method of improving skills throughout the call.

Using the call structure to train staff

Every phone call has a structure. The structure is made up of the essential phases or stages of the phone call from greeting to closing. The structure of the call may vary. A credit check call has a different structure than a customer service call. A claim call has a different structure than handling a simple Customer inquiry.

It is important that you work through the key stages of your typical calls and use the training session to improve technique at each stage. For example, what is a good greeting? What are good ways to ask questions? What are not such good ways that we should avoid?

When handling difficult calls, it is really important to ensure that the initial stages of the call are carried out effectively, so that the entire call is handled in a professional manner.

The call structure for customer service

A good call structure for a standard customer service phone call is:

1. Good regards. The greeting should always start with a good morning or good afternoon. Not only is this a nice way to greet someone, but it also ensures that the first word the caller hears is positive. The greeting also includes the identification of the Company or Department and the name of the person who answers the call. Giving your name ensures that the call is personal.

2. First positive answer. The caller will express his query or request. Again, the first thing they should hear should be positive. I can certainly help with that, or no problem, I’ll be happy to help.

3. Good question. The representative will ask questions to clarify the problem and make sure you have the information you need to help. Questions can often be perceived as aggressive or intrusive. Have your team review how they ask the questions to make sure they are not creating adverse reactions. A good method of doing this in a training session is to ask the questions wrong first and then ask the same questions very well. The group can then analyze the bad and the good to identify the difference.

Four. Listen and listen to answers. When the caller has answered a question, the representative should repeat the above numbers or key details, or respond encouragingly to the caller. This ensures that the details are correct and that there is no silence.

5. Confirming understanding. This is a key stage of the call that is often overlooked. The representative summarizes the problem or inquiry to the caller and confirms that they have the correct problem. There are two main benefits to this stage of the call. One is that the representative really makes sure they get it right before providing a solution. The other is that the caller has a very positive feeling that the representative has listened and also understands. With an irate caller or a delicate situation, this phase is the key to handling this call well, tell them!

6. Provide a solution. At this point, the representative will offer information or a solution. This is done using definite, positive language rather than negative, submissive, or aggressive language. Even if you can’t offer a solution, we can still be positive and helpful. The format for this is, unfortunately we cannot do this, but what I can suggest is that. Make sure you have a positive option to offer.

7. Obtain the consent of the caller. The effective representative will ask closed questions to obtain the agreement of the caller and move smoothly towards closing the call.

8. Close the call. Have alternative closings for different types of calls. Remember that closing is the last thing the caller will remember, so make sure it’s positive.