Training materials. The Telephone Skills Coaching Manual

Citation

(2003), "Training materials. The Telephone Skills Coaching Manual", Education + Training, Vol. 45 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2003.00445bad.004

Training materials. The Telephone Skills Coaching Manual

The Telephone Skills Coaching Manual

Pat CochraneGower2002ISBN 0566083027£350

Telephone skills are second nature to most people – and that is the problem. We make assumptions about the people we are talking to, we are careless and lazy about what we say and we fall into bad habits. Everyone has been on the receiving end of poor telephone skills – probably on many occasions – and yet few of us recognize the faults as our own. The Telephone Skills Coaching Manual contains 38 ready-to-use sessions for working with individuals or small groups. The material is designed to enable the trainer or coach to help trainees to reflect on their experiences, share success, learn from failure and practise new skills and techniques until they are ready to try them out for real.

The coaching process used in the manual not only helps to improve self-awareness, but also teaches people how to observe behaviour and how to give and receive effective feedback, all of which can help to create a supportive working environment. The manual's first volume focuses on the telephone skills we all need, along with the skills for handling inbound customer-service and sales calls. Volume 2 covers outbound calls.

The materials include handouts, worksheets, overhead-projector slides and training-guidance notes. They can be used to train anyone who needs to improve their telephone skills:

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  receptionists and telephone "gatekeepers";

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  call-centre and telephone-sales teams;

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  credit-control staff; and

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  other specialists.