What to say when you do answer (Part 1)

Don’t say your entire sales spiel.

A long greeting causes your caller to be uncomfortable, unsure whether you’re quite finished, and even interrupt you before you finish! This situation makes the initial interaction an awkward one.

Remember the plumbing company from Chapter 2? When it’s time to decide how to answer your phone, it can serve as an example for good…and for bad. You should have scripts for your front line people. How they answer the phone is critical to how people perceive your business, so you don’t want to leave that up to chance.

But don’t put your entire sales spiel into that script…no matter how tempting that may be! Your frontline phone people will be dealing with a large number of calls, and it is more customer-friendly to limit the greeting. Sure, if you’ve got some major promotion that will affect a lot of people, then let them know. But keep it brief…no more than a few words.

 

Confirm the company name, and provide your first name

Here’s an example: “Charter Insurance. This is Julie.” This greeting confirms for the caller that he reached the right company (you’d be surprised how many people dial the wrong number!), and it gives your name as an invitation for the caller to use it to springboard into the conversation. You have now become the “voice” of the company. And with that power comes a responsibility to provide a great customer experience.

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to the comments for this post with RSS: RSS2 RSS 2.0