Two telephone tips
Recently, due to moving house, I’ve been making lots of telephone calls to various organisations — power companies, gas companies, telephone companies, local councils and so on.
Virtually all of them make two annoying mistakes. Your receptionist needs to avoid these mistakes when they answer the telephone in your dental practice.
Mistake #1 — Rushing the greeting
Most greetings go by so fast that you can hear neither the company nor the person’s name. It almost as if they only have ½ a second to get that out of the way. Even wearing noise cancelling headphones I struggle to get those two details. Time and again I hear:
“lo-dr-pls-off’s-ths-z-rlph-how-cn-I-hlp-you?” (spoken all as one word.)
Instead of:
“Hello, thanks for calling Dr Paul’s office. This is Ralph. How may I help you?” (spoken slowly and clearly.)
To speak clearly and slowly costs an extra second but it puts your customer at ease. It makes them feel important and not just an interruption to more important work.
Mistake #2 — Not listening right at the start
So often I’ve explained what I want only to realise that the person was not listening and that I have to repeat everything. It’s almost as if the person did not have their listening ears on right at the start of the call.
Years ago I had a receptionist who repeatedly did that. She’d answer the phone, listen for a while and then say: “Excuse me.” The person she was speaking to had to start over — annoying.
We trained her that she had to listen right from the start of the call and always have a pad and pen at hand to make notes.
If you correct these two errors in telephone technique you will be way better than nearly every big company in the world.
