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Telephone Techniques For Business
OTHER TOPICS
If there is just you in the office, or you work from home, then unless you have an extremely good set up and professional message just relying on an answerphone, can present an unprofessional view of your company. One way around this is to use a telephone answering service, or virtual receptionist.
The idea is basically, that any time
you have to go out of the office
you first call your telephone
answering service and divert all
incoming calls to them. This can
be an expensive service when
overused but if you use it sparingly,
by which I mean divert calls to your
mobile as a first preference, It’s possible to keep the costs down. While it might not be worthwhile if you were selling potatoes at £1.50 per bag, as a financial adviser it could mean the difference between selling and not selling a mortgage with associated insurance which could net you a thousand pounds. So it is probably worth trying
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Telephone Answering Services?
Using the telephone which might seem boring and obvious, compared to internet
marketing which is sexy, gee whiz, up to date and a bit (just a bit) cutting edge, but if
you compare the affect the average financial advisers website has on business to the amount of business conducted by telephone, you can immediately see that for most
businesses at this point in time the telephone is more important by a mile!
Remember, the telephone, is the first point of contact for most clients, and the
most used form of communication with clients which immediately makes it very
important.
First Point : answer it personally if you possibly can. In the backwoods of Cajun
Louisiana, apparently the standard greeting for a telephone call is "Who Dis……" but even that will get more response than an answerphone. Use call forwarding if you have to, it might cost you a few pounds a month, but if it saves one client a year then it's paid for itself a hundred times over, and it makes you sound much more approachable to your existing clients. Don't worry that they might ask you a question you don't have the answer to, just thank them for the call and tell them you will get back top them with the answer, tomorrow, or after the weekend. A lot of people get really wound up having to fit in with the demands of big business, telephone, menu systems and recorded announcements of "please ring back between the hours of 9.30am and 5.00pm, your call is important to us", just compare that to "Hello, this is Bobbies Mortgages, Bobby Smith here, how can I help you"….No contest.
Second Point : answer within 3 rings if you can, and if you do use an answerphone, make sure it's turned off when you are in the office. This is one of my most common faults, and I find it irritating, so how annoying must it be to the person on the other end of the line!
Third Point : remember you have lost all the visual signals when communicating by telephone, so you have to exaggerate the vocal signals. Make sure you are smiling when you speak to clients; I often stand up if I think it might be a lengthy or important conversation, as if you slump in your chair it can make your voice depressed, or bored. If you think this is rubbish just try it, ring your own mobile voicemail from a land line and record one message slumped in a chair with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, and then leave another message standing up and smiling. If you can't hear a subtle difference then you either need a speech therapist or a hearing consultant.
Fourth Point : don't use slang or professional jargon with people you don't know and try to tone down your regional accent , coming from Newcastle, with half a century watching the fog on the Tyne, my natural Geordie accent is so strong that if I didn't modify it a bit, clients would have to employ translators if they wanted to do business with me. You don't need to lose it completely or put a ridiculous "BBC" voice as many regional accents sound comforting and reassuring, just take the edge off it.
Firth Point : If you're having a really bad day, don't let anyone know, clients have
there own problems and mood swings, so let them think you're always up beat and positive
(you can always bang your head on the desk once they've hung up). Try to have a
standard telephone persona, get into the habit of always using the same greeting,
you’re professional. Upbeat, knowledgeable, a can-
Sixth Point : don't put off ringing someone back. If you can call them back the same day then do it, and this especially applies to those calls you don't want to make. If the client is snotty with you because they haven't got the service or result they thought they should have, don't make them even snottier because they also think you are avoiding them.
Seventh Point : If you can't understand the person speaking to you, and it doesn't matter if it's a technical fault or they’ve got a speech defect, apologise profusely, make sure they know you have the problem and not them, and you're grateful they are helping you out, blame the "bad line" and get them to spell things out if necessary, don't make it worse by taking a wrong message. A rubbish telephone manner is bad , a rubbish telephone manner combined with bloody stupid, could be fatal in commercial terms.
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