5 top tips for answering your phone calls

Written by LiveLink
June 23rd 2016

If you’re working in the business world, chances are you take a lot of phone calls every day. One option for your company might be a telephone answering service which can handle these calls for you, but if you’re going to be taking calls yourself, here are some of our top tips to help you sound calm, friendly, and helpful while answering calls.

1. Lift your head up when you answer the phone. If you’re staring down at the desk while on the phone, you’re likely to be engaging less well with the conversation, and perhaps missing important information. One way to avoid this is to purposefully lift up your head as you answer a call. This simple action will encourage you to focus on the conversation and help you to stay engaged and attentive.
2. Don’t have a fixed smile. A lot of people will tell you to smile while you’re on a call — this is good advice, but if you’re focusing too much on maintaining a grimace, you’re likely to be more tense. Your facial muscles have a large part to play in the mood of your voice, so make sure to keep your face relaxed or you could end up sounding stressed.
3. Answer on the second ring. Making (and taking) phone calls can be a stressful activity for a lot of people, and it helps to have time to mentally prepare. If you answer the call as soon as your phone rings, you might surprise people, putting them on the back foot and leaving you feeling apologetic. To avoid this, let the phone ring once before picking up, to give the caller (and yourself) a little time to settle. Don’t leave it too long, though — you don’t want your customers to feel ignored.
4. Make sure you’re prepared to answer. If you’ve got a call scheduled, ensure you have all the relevant information to hand — there’s nothing worse than having to shuffle the contents of your desk around to get at an important piece of information while a customer is waiting. Even if the call was unscheduled, make sure you’ve got a pen and message pad readily available to jot down any relevant information. Finally, make sure you’re not doing something else while on the phone. At best, you’ll sound distracted, and at worst, confused and unprofessional, or even rude.
5. Don’t eat or drink while answering a phone call. This might sound like simple advice, but things like eating and drinking can often be easily heard, even down a telephone line, and the person on the other end won’t appreciate the sound of you slurping coffee.

These tips are used by many in the telephone answering service industry. Try them out next time you have to take a professional call, and see the different it makes.