The lost art of conversation

A recent survey, which questioned 1,000 members of the public, highlighted that many people found that business are losing the art of conversation, often offering a poor service to customers over the telephone. The feedback included unhelpful or impolite call handlers and telephones that aren’t answered with a reasonable time. Overuse of voicemail and automated call menus were also a bugbear. Sometimes automated call menus can cause confusion especially for the elderly, so it is important your practice takes your ‘customers’ into consideration.

Brush up on skills

Anyone who is on reception can be faced with many different situations whilst on the telephone. Emergencies, booking appointment, checking for results, requests to speak to the dentists, complaints and many more general enquiries are very much a part of the constant calls that you are dealing with and you are all expected to know the answers and deal with each and every call request appropriately.Are you confident that the whole team is competent in doing this? Being a ‘call handler’ can be a very demanding job, one call after another, often irate people moaning because they have been holding on far too long, patients demanding appointments and so on and on top of that the emergency calls that come though that need dealing with.