Can your younger staff answer the phone correctly and hold a conversation.................

[NaomiFromMilkShake]

Where they are in control....

I will admit it, I am old (ish) and the amount of calls I take from callers who can't structure a phone call and achieve an outcome is boggling.

It is not every young person and there is certain young man who works in Manchester who calls our company and is unlikely to ever read MN, but if you are David from New Horizons you are brilliant.

But back to my point, the amount of young,youngish people I take calls from who can't do it is .................

I took one the other day, and the caller who didn't sound like a school leaver, but younger than thirty (imo) , I opened the call, with name of company, good morning.

She replied with.................... silence .......oh yeah can I speak to , continued to get the whole call wrong.

I floated the idea at the weekend amongst friends of setting a company offering telephone training, guidance in setting out a basic letter etc.,,,

They were all in the 40/50 bracket and reckoned there was a gap in the market.

I take early retirement in a year or two and would happily look into doing it, if I thought there was a market.

Opinions please.

Definitely. The amount of basic grammar I have to correct is infuriating.

I cannot imagine the awkwardness of a conversation where I would explain the difference between a full stop and a comma to a 25 year old. Were it in my power I would send them on your course

It's a problem where I work, we have like an online log and the basic English language and sentence structure from some is cringeworthy, but I don't correct it for fear of seeming superior (new)

An used repeatedly instead of and for example

Eg Me an Eine informed X this was not possible an X said they an Y

Excruciating

Add into that I've taken the decision that a staff member will never again make a phone call on my behalf

Absolutely garbled - unprofessional/embarrassing to listen to, I was basically gesturing her to end the call nearly immediately.

Said she was calling on behalf of (but didn't even phrase it properly) : gave completely the wrong surname and a shortening of my first name eg Meg Jones instead of Margaret Johnson and then couldn't give the surname of an involved third party and just kept saying Sandra Something and was asking me though it was her business to know not mine as I am new. Spoke in a really slurred, uncouth and unprofessional way as if she was at a counter ordering a Maccys

I say it was poor reflection on your recruitment processes because my teenagers, not yet in employment,can hold a good phone conversation when phoning official places.

You sound very patronising. It must be fabulous ........ being perfect ,,

I notice it a lot with callers in- mainly sales. However with the people I work with, social workers, GPs and other agencies no. With my clients, who are young and disadvantaged- not at all! In fact on first face to face meeting it’s something I can invariably comment on, how good their phone manner is.

^ maybe it’s to do with focus

All the young people in my office are perfectly capable of having a proper phone conversation and writing fluently, as are my children. So in my experience the situation you describe is by no means universal. I would say, though, that picking up the phone isn't usually their first line of action, and this is certainly something I try to remind my own children to do more often.

You should hear the lad they've recruited to record the phone message when you call my GP. He sounds like he's had a knock to the head!

To be honest, your post writing skills aren't up to much. I'm struggling to get the gist of what you're saying. Are you sure you have a marketable talent to offer?

What do you mean by ‘she continued to get the whole call wrong’?

I understand what you mean. I was a receptionist many moons ago so I speak well (and for England) on the phone. But I overhear some phone calls and conversations from younger people, as I'm right beside a college and several secondary schools and its just 😬 Ha! I actually wonder if I ever sounded like that!

Do you have protocols and do they understand them? It's hard to do a phone call when you don't know what you're talking about and I've been in that position not because I was crap at the phone but because I'd been left to lone work without a clue how half the things in the department worked and no one around to ask.

I actually wonder if I ever sounded like that

What do you mean? Are you referring to accent/pronunciation?

Tbh both the OP and @EineReiseDurchDieZeit’s examples don’t make huge sense so I’m not sure they’re in such a position to judge...

But @EmmiJay, presumably the phone conversations you’re overheating near a secondary school are kids chatting informally to one another on their mobiles, not adults in the workplace making work phone calls?

I am late 20s, and (I hope) I don't come across this way at work, now. I'm in a relatively new role, and probably sounded awful at first, until I picked up on the jargon and could make sense of what people were saying to me during a call.

We have surprisingly poor SPAG, where I work (LA). I'm not one to pick up on it, in an informal setting (like MN!), but in a professional setting, it really grates on me.

I had an email from mid-level management, which included 'if I'd known, I never of would of'.

About 90% of the staff also don't seem to know the difference between 'sought' and 'sort', e.g 'advice is sort on behalf of'.

@EineReiseDurchDieZeit

Ironically, your post is practically unintelligible. I’d think about our own writing ability before criticising others.

@NaomiFromMilkShake

What an ageist, patronising post.

Nice bit of ageism on this thread

I'm 30 and have been using phones for years (??).
While working in retail and bars as a late teen and in my early 20s I had to answer calls as I'm sure many young people have.
I don't this it is an age thing at all but more a confidence thing. Some people hate speaking on the phone and prefer to communicate by email. If you don't do it very often, its hard to be good at it!

Oh gosh and I could tell you many, many stories of 'older' (as in older than me) callers who have no phone etiquette but I understand that that is specifically them rather than that whole age group

I've worked in contact centres since I was 22 and pubs before that. I should hope I can manage a phone call

I mean did I ever sound so unsure and with an upwards inflection at the end of every sentence.😁 To the other person who asked about the secondary school kids; well those little ones, will most likely turn into those college students who would turn up at my work place looking for work/information but not knowing exactly how to articulate who or what they were after. I never spoke down to them or laughed at them though just had to decipher I guess.

My staff are great! No problems with telephone manner from them, the youngest just turned 22 and is excellent. Maybe I was just lucky with my recruitment campaigns and got the best of the bunch!

Interesting. I’m not hugely old but neither am I a youth (~35). I started in my first job pre everything being online and, in fact, my very first job was answering the phone for a takeaway and taking orders. Definitely taught me a proper telephone manner.

In my job now I work with a wide range of people between recent graduates and 60. I am definitely the youngest one who has a clue when it comes to making and taking proper, professional calls.