Categories and Types of Callers

In our day-to-day life we come across many type of callers, there are different categories of callers:

1. Non-stop talker:

To handle a caller who is continuously talking over phone and not allowing you to utter a single word can be tackled in following ways:

Hear initially: This goes with every caller you come across, you should hear clearly and patiently in initial minutes of calling so that he should not have any complaint that the receiver is not listening to me.

Jump in when the caller begins to repeat the story: Some callers get carried away and repeat their phrases, as a good call handling person one should prevent this thing to happen and barge in to stop the person to blabber un-necessarily and waste time.

Interrupt and try to catch the person’s name: to stop the person to drag his talks, it’s good to say “sorry for interrupting…can I have your full name”? This will put a stop in the speed of his words, which may be useful to stop him to speak a lot later.

Ask close-ended questions: This tactic also prevents the caller to cut-short his words in between.

Summarise the action to be taken: After you finish the talks, always summarise the action you have to take after this call to satisfy the caller. This helps you to close the call professionaly.

2. Hard to understand caller:

Be patient: Some times it’s difficult to understand clearly what the caller wants to say. It may be cause of the disturbance in phone line, language barrier, some problem in the way of talking of the caller. There can be many such probles. To prevent that one should: speak slowly and clearly but not louder; the pitch of your voice should be lower. Make sure it should not sound abusive or ill-mannered.

Always ask the caller to repeat the information for verification so that there should not be any misunderstanding later on. You can also look for some bilingual person around you who can help you decode and translate the language of the caller. Lastly, if all the mentioned options cannot be fulfilled its always safe to request the caller to send email or fax of what he/she wants to convey.

3.Complaining Callers

In business or any service there may be some customers who are not satisfied with the way you give them service or the way their product works. It means he/she is not getting what the company had promised. In their rage they think that the customer service agent is being rude to them. They think that no one is listening to them and the company is insensitive towards them.

In continuation to the above details there are steps to handle angry and abusive callers.

a. Always take anger professionally and not personally. Always show that you care about what happened with the opposite person.

b. Listen to understand, do not interrupt.

c. Empathise with the caller, acknowledge their feelings.

d. Ask informative questions from them; which will help you to identify their needs and wants.

e. Always offer options to the callers, tell them what is beneficial to them and what you can do for them.

f. Together during discussion find a positive solution and reconfirm the outcome.

These steps will be helpful to handle different types of callers.