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Transferring the people round and round the organization
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Negative attitude
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Sounding unsure of what you are saying It is also far easier to be evasive and even rude on the telephone than it is when we are face to face with someone. Because of the busy working lives most of us lead, it is also easy to see the telephone as an interruption. How frustrating it is when it rings when we are half way through adding a column of figures or writing a difficult letter. That irritation can be heard in our voice. However much we feel this piece of machinery is a distraction, it is vital for continuing the prosperity of our organization. Seventy percent of new business is initiated over the telephone. Can any of us therefore afford to leave things to chance? Creating the right image on the telephone is helped by a number of factors:
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Establishing a good telephone procedure in the organization
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Establishing consistency in the way the telephone is answered throughout the organization
. Including “how to use the telephone” in induction sessions for all new employees There is no doubt that if everyone in the organization adopts the right approach to the telephone, we will be seen as the efficient, friendly and helpful organization we want to be.
10.1 Communicating Over the Telephone
A simple definition of communication is
“The creation of understanding in someone else’s mind, in order to promote action.” Communication is a two-way process and the understanding we aim to create must be accurate in every way. When we talk to people face to face we have the great advantage of being able to see them. This helps because we can actually see how they are responding to our message. We can easily recognize the “glazed look” when someone has not quite grasped our meaning and we can act on that and try saying it in a different way until we are satisfied we have got the message across. On the telephone we are hampered because all the visual contact has gone (at least until a telephone with a video screen is invented). We therefore have to rely on two crucial elements: Listening and concentrating on what we hear Our voice – its tone and the words we use.
Listening
When we are on the telephone to someone, we are either speaking or listening. We often regard
speaking as an active process and listening as a passive one. However, listening well can be a lot
more difficult than speaking, and requires a lot more effort.
On the telephone, it is just as easy to stop listening, for various reasons:
. Having pre-conceived ideas about what the caller is going to say
. Something distracting us in the office
. The caller having an uninteresting voice
. Panicking because of our own inexperience One of the best solutions to poor listening is to concentrate our minds on the subject matter by taking notes. Have a telephone pad and pen next to the telephone at all times and if necessary fix them in some way to the desk so they do not get lost. There is nothing more frustrating than
scrabbling around for something to write on or with after the call has started. Taking notes right
from the beginning of the conversation saves repeating small but vital facts later on and
minimizes the effect if distractions is going on around us.
Finally we need to make sure the caller knows that we are listening. When speaking face to face,
we use many non-verbal signs to indicate this, such as nodding. On the telephone, we need to use
“verbal nods”. For example, we need to say “I see”, “yes” or “mmm” to indicate:
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That we are still there, and
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That we are listening
Voice
As we have no visual contact on the telephone, we cannot use non-verbal body signs to help attract and keep the listener’s attention; we have only our voice. However, it is not just what we say (words) but the way we say it (tone) that is important in creating the right image. We need to capitalize on these two elements to make up for the loss of visual contact. Words are the tools of a speaker’s trade and we should bear the following points in mind if we are to be successful. Use words which:
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