Running a business involves solving customers's problems and solving customers problems involved speaking to customers. Techology has made it easy to connect with customers on the go be it from your home office or anywhere.

But knowing how to answer customers over the phone is a skill that very people possess, but can be learnt. There are a few rules to follow when anwering a customers, while these rules are not fixed, they are intended to help you give your customer the best experience possible.


1) Answer the call before the second ring.

Have you tried calling someone before on a very important issue before, and they did not pick up until the 5th time? Remember how irritated you were? Well, imagine how irritared your customer would be if you took forever to pick up his or her call. You customer is the main reason for the existence of your business so make sure that you answer the call before the second ring. Not only will this improve the customer's experience, but would make him or her likely to call back.

2) Take note of your mood.

Happiness is contagious, and so is anger, and other emotions. To give your customer the best experience, it is important that you are in a good mood. If you are not in a good mood before picking the call, consider handing the call over to someone else to handle, but if you have no one to help you with the call try forcing a smile on your face this action would hellp reduce the anger in you and put you in a better position to attend to the customer

3)consistent opening phrase.

When you pick up the call you should start with a positive greeting and also state the name of your company; a customer should not ask to know who he or she is calling. There are three ways you can answer a phone call:

"Thank you for calling 'your company' how may i help you ?" - sometimes you might want to keep your identity a secret for some reasons, tjis kind of greeting is quite short and polite and should work perfectly.

Thanks for calling 'your company this is chikwuneme how may i help you? - this kind of conversation is used when both parties know each other. Here you state your name in the greeting. This type of greeting can help the customer in making references in future.


Good afternoon! Thanks for calling 'your company how may i help you? - This style of greeting looks cheery, and would work well in a less formal setting.



4) Speak properly.

When we speak over the phone sometimes, our voice becomes mufflled at the customers end, mostimes this is due to network issues or the type of device the customer uses. Because of this it is important that you speak properly and make your words distinct enough to be heard. You don't want the situation whereby you tell the customer to send you his number and then the customer sends you his birth certificate!


5) Take messages correctly.

Also, you want to make sure you have correctly heard and properly understood whatever the customer is saying, so as to give the customer the best solution to his or her problem. Make sure the volume of your phone is increase to a comfortable volume and also make sure thst the network connection at your location is good.

6) Do not waste your customer's time.

If you do not have time for a particular customer, perhaps you are busy with some other emergency, it is better to politely tell the customer to call back, stating ask for the customers permision to put him on hold. It is wrong for you to let a customers call go on un attended to, you could loose that customer and lost of money.


7) Prioritise urgent calls

At times you might get as many as ten calls at once, in that case what do you do? Answer them according to their level of seriousness. Different organizations have different ways of measuring emergencies, and assign different speed of responses to them. This is not to say that some customers are not important, all customers are important, but you have to answer in order or priority

Source: http://techburn.com.ng/2017/05/01/303/