5 Responses

1. Do it themselves
   in threes get teams to write their own good/bad role plays and act them out. The other teams then feedback on what was good/bad

2. Lead by example
   Why don’t you video yourself and a couple of collegues dealing with calls, show good and bad and then ask your delegates to comment on what they’ve seen and get them to re-inact them how they think they should have been done and video them doing it, this then offers a good source of discussion.

   It’s a cheaper alternative to buying in.

3. Audio tapes
   Hi Lucy,

   what I’ve found works really well is for the Trainer and a colleague to prepare a spoof audio tape demonstrating poor telephone skills. Make it amusing but based on a typical work situation.

   Give each group member a written transcript of the call so that they can follow it as they hear the tape.

   Ask for feedback on what went wrong during the call, and what should have happened.

   Then ask the group to rewrite the call in pairs and role play through the corrected ‘perfect’ version.

   Give marks out of 10 for each ‘performance’ and a small prize for the winning pair.

4. BODY LANGUAGE
   All the suggestions made are good ones. One thing worth bearing in mind id to find a way to remove the visibility factor – get people sitting back to back or behind a scree or whatever. One the key factors in poor telephone communication is the lack of body language. Making sure people can’t see each other really highlights how important tone of voice is to this.

5. Actors
   Lucy

   i’d suggest you get some actors to record you an audio tape,of some different telephone calls. It’s a one off cost and won’t cost that much. They usually come out much better than trainers doing them.