You may answer the phone so often at work that you’ve forgotten just how critical telephone screening skills are. We tend to become robotic with tasks that we complete multiple times a day, and that can lead to death by repetition. You make assumptions that can lead to missing information, the repetition dulls your bright telephone personality, and your once razor-sharp judgment becomes lax over time. Skills become dull and rusty if you don’t work to maintain them and push to be better every day.
Too many assistants overlook how incredibly important telephone etiquette and gatekeeping skills are. Are you one of them? Answering calls on behalf of someone else, effectively screening those calls, understanding what information should be released, and knowing how to do it all competently are very complex skills that top-of-their-game assistants must command. There’s a lot on the line for assistants who must be the gatekeeper for their leader. You must balance protection with professional courtesy.
Regardless of whether you’ve just started taking calls in your professional career or if you’ve fielded millions of calls, this brand-new eBook, The Gatekeeper’s Guide: How to Effectively Screen Calls, will serve to develop and sharpen critical telephone skills.
CAUTION! The Chapter headings may look simple, but the information behind them is deep and multifaceted.
Chapters Include:
- Can You Hear Me Now?
- The Gatekeeper’s Role
- Establishing the Rules
- Both Sides of the Scale
- Guidelines for Screening Calls
- Here’s Your Line
- Dealing with Angry Callers
- Getting Around the Gatekeeper
- Borderline Calls
You will learn:
- How to assess a caller’s needs
- How to be polite and strong at the same time
- The best way to deal with an irate caller
- How much information you should gather from a caller
- When and how to stall in order to gather more information
- Which calls require extra diligence and suspicion
- How to best represent your executive
- What to say and when to say it
