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.

*their first

I’d be wary starting a new business when you’re happily flapping your gums about people you interact with, even seemingly using their real name and company. Very worrying from a GDPR perspective.

My previous office was pretty much ran by graduates and current students. The majority of people were aged 19-25. They were fantastic at their job, meeting members of the public, students, academics and business leaders yet managing to communicate professionally and friendly with them all. Even contacting organisations in other countries to set up events, and hosting VIPs for the university we worked for.

Perhaps your company isn’t recruiting to the same standards as that across the board.....

@Sicario

I know. It's just me. I can't help it.

Yes, it is just you. 'While' and 'whilst' are entirely synonymous and always have been. 'Whilst' is literally the word 'while' with an excrescent 'st' ending, in the same way as 'among' and 'amongst' or 'amid' and 'amidst'.

@NaomiFromMilkShake

I can't stop looking back at your OP and marvelling at just how dreadfully-written it is. Is this a wind up or do you really think you're in a position to train people in the correct use of the English language?

I am 26, I am always complImented on my phone skills and communication. I has always been heavily on the phones though since my first office role at 18, then hr/internal recruitment, cover reception etc I have had lots of exposure.

I notice in the younger employees (late teens/esrly 20s) alot do struggle an can almost fear the phone!

When I was teenager, I spent hours on the phone. Nowadays, with the arrival of text messaging, that has been replaced with texts and WhatsApp. If younger people perhaps don’t sound as comfortable talking on the phone, maybe it’s because they haven’t had the practice older people had.

I don’t think it’s to do with age at all, in my experience it’s people who are educated to a low level or who have never worked in an office environment so just haven’t needed to use those skills before.

Sometimes my colleagues need to write letters with my name at the bottom and there are some people who I will check before sending every time, because they simply cannot write a sentence in English that is comprehensible. The main problem seems to be that they are not thinking about the person who will receive the letter and what they know about our job (less than us) or they use “fancy” words to make it look more official but they don’t understand the meaning of the words and they don’t make sense. One chap used to start every letter with “conversely” which I think he thought came from the word conversation?!

I don't think it's marketable. As a country we're used to terrible customer service. Companies have 'done the maths' and hiring unskilled people who can't hold effective conversations is of more benefit to them than putting resources into training staff to a professional standard.

I agree that younger people aren't used to speaking on the phone. Poor spelling and grammar transcends age.

(It's definitely not just me.)

Only old people phone anyway

PertEllaTitsahoy, all those people working in call centres must be pensioners then.

Well done timetest

Meanwhile, on MN, many people write ect and loose for etc and lose.

I once worked with a 30s senior lawyer who couldn't type or use Microsoft packages. She wrote emails to clients in lowercase. Had always been given a secretary!

I agree it's harder finding well educated and motivated new starters. The ones there are get snapped up quickly.

The one person that I find hard to talk to on the phone is a lady in her fifties who is in management. No manners, she barks orders which often make no sense and you have to guess part of a conversation that I assume has happened in her head, you must not ask questions because you will be shot down and then she abruptly hangs up mid conversation.

Telephone conversation skills and manners have nothing to do with age. Yabu.

We don't have a problem, and where issues are identified they can usually be sorted through training. And that goes for older workers struggling with O365, Teams, Slack etc too.

I'm in an industry which has lots of workers in their early 20's (I'm late 20's and management), the vast majority of whom are articulate, affable and able to steer a conversation within the remit of their roles.

The key thing here isn't age-based judgement, it's managing people's inexperience irrespective of their demographic.

Before you denounce the phone call etiquette of the younger generation, you could sort out the terrible grammar in your OP!

I avoid using the phone, I often stammer. There’s nothing I can do about that, sorry if I sound unprofessional on the phone!