How to Create a Professional Image on the Phone

1. Answer phone calls as fast as possible

Try to answer your callers as quickly as possible, to make your call feel important. Have you ever called a service, and felt less important and more concerned, the longer your phone rang?

By using this technique, you’ll be able to avoid making callers feel less respected, and avoid them changing their minds about considering your services. The faster you answer, the more professional your business will appear to your customers. Don’t let the caller hear more than three rings. You cannot lose customers just because of you being late to answer calls.

If you hire customer service agents to take all your business’s calls, train them to answer phone calls immediately, with professionalism.

2. Adopt a friendly and comfortable tone

By being friendly and open to talking to your customers, they’ll feel more comfortable talking to you. Greeting your customers can create a warm and positive first impression of yourself, and help them feel like you actually want to talk to them.

3. Speak clearly and slowly

Speaking clearly and slowly helps you deliver your messages concisely and with precision, so that your callers can know exactly what services you’re offering and how they can benefit their lives.

Talking fast in a call can make your customers feel like you’re busy, and disinterested in really finding out what they want. They’ll feel like they’re not worth the time to talk to, and will feel like you have better things to do than understanding their expectations.

Delivering your messages with confidence and with slow, clear language can create a more positive image of yourself and your company, because customers will feel like you truly believe in your services.

Avoid using any slang or dialect language, as your customers will feel uncomfortable with communicating with you. Don’t take this personally; people are unfamiliar with language out of their area of dialect.

4. Give your customers your full, undivided attention.

Don’t multi-task while you answer your call – this involves any sort of typing, handling papers and sending emails. Your callers can hear you click, type and sorting the papers with your hands. They don’t want to know the fact that they’re not important, and this creates a negative image of your company. Talk about unprofessional companies. Have you ever called a customer service number and heard a service representative doing other things while talking to you? Did you think they were being rude?

5. Avoid interrupting what your caller has to say.

Never interrupt your callers when they’re talking. By being interrupted, your customers will feel like what they’re saying isn’t valuable, and worth listening to.

The best tactic here is patience. Be patient as possible, and try to respect what your customers are saying, even if you know what they’re saying is incorrect.

6. Don’t hype up your services.

Your customers don’t want to hear a sales pitch when they dial your number. They’re looking for specific information that they want to know, and are curious about. Tell the most truth as possible to your callers, and don’t hype up your services to convince them to use your services, if you don’t really offer the specific services they’re asking for.

These 6 tips listed above will help you create a professional yet friendly image of your company, which customers will be inclined to call again to find more about your services.

Share This