22.11.08

Love and Honor Thy Telephone
By Josh Wilson, Communications Director,
Alinga Consulting Group

Do you work in a professional services firm in Moscow? You can't even imagine how hard your job is.

Aside from the legislation that you must keep up with and follow, and aside from the actual professional work you may do, whether it be accounting, legal, engineering, or design, there are many things that make your job more challenging.

Professionals everywhere often feel that their work is taken for granted. However, the reasons for this are augmented for those in professional services firms, and especially for such firms located in cosmopolitan business centers such as Moscow. Your clients lack daily face-to-face interaction with you and usually lack the professional knowledge to fully understand what you do for them. They are therefore usually unable to judge the quality of the hard work you do.

The only thing clients actively and strongly evaluate is – how friendly and responsive you are. This image of you that the client builds is further complicated by two issues: 1) the fact that it is usually built via email and telephone conversations, in which they cannot see you smiling or working hard and 2) the fact that often your clients are from a very different culture than yours.

To build a successful professional services business, the challenges of working from different offices, different countries, and different cultures must be overcome. To do so, employees must be culturally conscious in building effective skills at communicating via telephone and email. The management of a company also holds responsibilities to create an environment in which communication is encouraged and facilitated.

Today, we will look at incoming telephone communication. Future articles in this series will examine outgoing telephone communication, email communications and management efforts.

Telephone communication should be treated as though you were face-to-face with a client who has walked into your office during a power outage and cannot see anything. By imagining this, telephone communication can be improved with just a few easy steps:

1. Try to answer the call by the third ring. By the fourth or fifth rings, the client has often begun to doubt that they will reach you and has been left alone in the dark.
2. Before you answer the phone, take a moment and smile. The client can't see your smile, but a smile automatically and distinctly changes the quality of your voice and the client will hear and recognize that. While this may seem "weird" or maybe just very "American," your smile is an important first step to building your relationship with the client – whether the client can see it or only just hear it.
3. Always begin the call with "Здравствуйте" and your name. The client cannot recognize your voice and cannot see your face. If the client is simply greeted with "Allo" he or she will likely feel the need to verify who you are and if you can answer their questions before continuing. This is especially the case with foreign clients who are used to hearing a simple "Hello" only when calling a private number. By saying your name immediately, you reassure the client, make him or her feel more confident in the interaction, and, in the end, save both yourself and the client time. You also become instantly more personable because the client knows how to refer to you personally (and will likely introduce him/herself in return, making the interaction equal).
4. Keep in mind that your client may also be "in the dark" about what he/she is asking about. You are not just an accountant or lawyer – as a professional services provider, you are a teacher and should be prepared not only to answer questions about your work, but to explain those answers and provide analysis as to what the information means for the client's business. If you don't know the answer to a question you are asked, offer to put the client on hold and find out. If you can't immediately find out, offer to call the client back later in the day with the answer.
5. Always remember what you promised. If you tell a client you will call him or her back, always state when you will do and remember to do so. Write yourself a note on a sticky and put in your computer. Your company will most likely buy you lots of stickies with pleasure if you need.  

Never tell the client that it's not your job or your department. At the end of the day, it is the client who pays your rent, feeds you, and takes you to the movies on weekends. The client is never an imposition or an interruption. The client is your job and the telephone is your way of building a successful relationship with the client and a successful career as a professional services provider.

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