Handbook of Advanced Phone Skills

The Handbook of Advanced Phone Skills provides dozens and dozens of tips and techniques for handling every phone call in a courteous, professional, business-building manner.

In the section below, you’ll see just how much useful, skill-building information is packed into a brief half page of this practical guide.

Take ownership of every call

Another fundamental step to providing excellent service is to take ownership of the call — this is one of the most powerful tools you have. Callers quickly become frustrated when they can’t get answers to their questions and are transferred from one person or department to the next.

You can eliminate this problem by taking ownership at the beginning of the call with a simple phrase like, “I would be happy to help you with that.” This tells the caller that you are taking responsibility for handling her issue. If during the course of a call you realize that you won’t be able to resolve the call on the spot, you can still take responsibility for the issue or problem. You do this by assuring the customer that even though you don’t have the answer, you or someone else will get the answer and get back to the customer as soon as possible.

A good rule of thumb is to respond to customers before the end of the business day or within four business hours. (Thus if your normal business hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and you speak with a customer at 4 p.m., you will return the call no later than noon the following day.) Even if the issue hasn’t been resolved at that time, it’s a good practice to contact the customer with a status report and let him know when you’ll call back again.

When you must transfer a call you can still take ownership by staying on the line, introducing the caller and explaining the situation to the new rep so the customer won’t have to go over everything again. You may not be solving the problem yourself, but callers will recognize and appreciate your effort.

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