Keep Professional When Phone Answering in Your Business

Being a receptionist is a big job as you are the front of house, the person that people see first when walking through the door and the first person they speak to is you. When contacting the company, your impression means everything to the client; when phone answering it is important you hear everything correctly. You should check and double check to keep the client from going elsewhere for business. Below are a few suggestions to help maintain the professional image for your company through telephone answering.

Although receptionists and call handlers take messages, the receptionist may not be equipped with the full knowledge of the company such as those working as a lawyer’s receptionist. Taking calls is one thing but when bombarded with questions on a current case, this is a bit out of their comfort zone and they can not be expected to be trained in law to answer calls. Therefore in order to maintain dignity and keep a client happy, a technique to enable a level of understanding is by jotting down what they are saying as they are speaking to you. This ensures you can reiterate back to them what they have just said, 'Just to make sure you want Mrs Knowles to contact you on the recent file you discussed?' this will avoid any questions 'OK thank you, I will notify Mrs Knowles and get her to give you a call back.'

Phrasing a message in a certain way will imply you are dealing with the enquiry and have listened to them, therefore if they were once aggravated during the call, they will no longer feel so as you have dealt with their requests effectively.

If the staff member is at their desk, the notes you were jotting down will be handy for them before you hand the call over - so they are aware of conversation and can take over from you.

Confusing names is a basic mistake but a very common one, too. There are many names that are quite similar, or it may just be the caller said their name quickly so when answering the phone offer your name clearly and make sure you take their name too. For example, if their name is 'Tom' but it sounded as though they said 'John' phonetically read back their name, sorry is that 'J' for 'January,' this will avoid any confusion and embarrassment on your part.

Phone answering is important, so make sure your company is getting it right.