In 2019, fewer than 6% of people in the United States worked from home. By 2020, that number rose to over five and a half million. According to the data specialists at job listing website Ladders, up to 25% of American jobs will be remote by the end of 2022.
The message is clear.
Work from home (WFH) culture isn’t a passing trend. Your business must adopt a new workplace culture to stay relevant in the 21st century.
Phone communication is vital in a WFH culture. This article examines some of the critical phone communication skills you and anyone you employ must learn for a more effective WFH environment.
A WFH environment includes distractions that may not exist in the office. Employees have access to personal computers, devices, and televisions, which can pull their attention away from work. Furthermore, working from home often requires the employee to have several web browser tabs and applications open. All of these distractions can take focus away from a call.
Eliminating these distractions can be as simple as closing browser tabs and email clients. Shutting the door to the home office and keeping phones set to silent also ensures that no unexpected noises will get in the way of a call.
With distractions eliminated, you can keep your focus on the person you’re speaking to. It becomes easier to listen to what they’re saying and absorb the information delivered to you. This heightened understanding allows you to create more compelling responses, leading to productive phone calls.
It’s not uncommon to feel a brief moment of panic when the phone rings.
Phone communication may not be your strong point. You might believe you’re better in face-to-face situations or that you excel when communicating via instant messaging and email. However, you won’t always have those options, meaning a panicked response to the phone ringing might influence the call’s direction.
Overcoming this problem can be as simple as practicing standard composure techniques.
Take a couple of deep breaths to calm the nerves. If available, check the Caller ID to know who’s calling and the general topics the call may cover.
Composure techniques allow you to approach calls with positive energy. That energy feeds the person on the other end of the line, creating the foundation for more productive work-related calls.
Despite its advantages, WFH culture can isolate employees from colleagues and managers. If this issue isn’t accounted for, employees may lose focus on their objectives or find it challenging to complete tasks appropriately from home.
Morning meetings help to avoid this situation.
A morning meeting doesn’t have to be an in-depth discussion of everything your team needs to focus on. Instead, make it a place to share business wins and solidify each employee’s priorities for the day ahead. Think of these meetings as telephone-based watercooler conversations that focus on business and give your people a chance to interact with one another.
There’s a difference between hearing and listening, especially in phone communication. Active listening means specifically listening with the intent to understand the speaker. It’s also a technique that allows employees to keep conversations flowing to ensure they get the most out of their conversations.
Rephrasing is a crucial component of active listening. Encourage employees to rephrase and repeat whatever is said to them during a phone communication. Rephrasing allows the employee to demonstrate that they understand the message communicated and gives the person on the other end a chance to correct any mistakes or misconceptions.
Using prompts also helps with active listening. A simple question, such as “how does x influence y?” enables people to draw more information from their conversation partner. Plus, these questions can help your employee steer conversations toward relevant topics.
Active listening ensures a better understanding of any information shared in a conversation. This understanding leads to fewer errors and ensures that your people stay on the right track with their work.
The impersonal nature of phone communication can impact calls. When people can’t see whom they’re speaking to, they may experience trouble listening or maintaining their end of the conversation.
Visualizing the person on the other end of the line helps here.
Imagining a face-to-face conversation is more effortless when forming a mental image of the person on the other end of the line. Adding this more personal element makes the employee more likely to actively listen to the conversation, making their responses more relevant.
Visualization also helps employees to consider their demeanor and approach to phone communication. Visualizing the other person allows employees to mentally simulate a face-to-face conversation, ensuring they maintain the cadence that they would have when speaking to somebody directly.
By visualizing the other person, you also affect body language. You and your employees are unlikely to slump your shoulders or get distracted by an electronic device in a face-to-face conversation. As a result, the chat is more animated, energetic, and productive.
When it comes to communicating with WFH employees, feedback sessions are essential. However, these sessions are only as effective as the questions you ask. If you’re not listening for opportunities to ask appropriate questions, you may miss the chance to uncover information that reveals how your employee is handling working from home.
For example, let’s assume you have an employee who isn’t meeting their targets.
You could use your feedback call to raise this issue and provide advice on improving performance. While this isn’t a flawed approach, it means your employee doesn’t have an opportunity to explain any problems they might be having.
It’s better to raise the issue and ask your employee to explain what’s happening. Not only do you make the feedback session more valuable to the employee, but you can also ask questions that dig into the issue. Your employee may have personal problems or not feel engaged with their work, but you may never uncover these issues if you don’t listen and ask questions.
How do you know which are the right questions to ask?
That’s where active listening comes back into play.
Take a relaxed approach to feedback conversations. Provide the employee with the chance to talk and take notes as they do. You may hear hints about the problem or find issues that need clarification. Ask questions based on these cues, and you’re more likely to uncover a challenge that you can work together to overcome.
There are few things more frustrating to an employee than somebody failing to act on the feedback they provide. This problem is compounded by phone communication in a WFH environment. Without the ability to actively check that somebody has confronted the issue they’ve raised, an employee may become disillusioned with the idea of providing feedback.
They may hold back from providing vital information in the future.
You can avoid this by doing the following:
Why do people engage in phone communication?
Typically, it’s because they need to solve a problem. That’s certainly the case for most customer calls. Your customers contact your team to discuss issues with your product, ask questions, and even purchase from you. All of these are problems that your team is likely used to handling.
Thankfully, this also means they have an approach they can use when handling telephone conversations within the team.
Ask your team to treat their colleagues like customers. In other words, take a problem-focused approach to phone communication. Rather than using the phone to talk about personal issues, ensure they keep their attention on problems related to work. By encouraging this approach, telephone conversations can lead to solutions suited for WFH environments.
If the problem isn’t solved, it will likely get elevated to upper management. Active listening and feedback techniques can lead to a resolution in these cases.
You or your employees may miss calls.
That doesn’t have to be a significant problem. Relying on phone communication means that some calls might get missed. Someone may get tied up in another call, or personal issues inherent to a WFH environment, such as taking care of children, might come up.
However, failing to respond when you realize you’ve missed a call is a problem.
Train your team to respond to all calls, including those they missed the first time around. Even something as simple as a brief call back to confirm they received the first call and want to schedule time for a more in-depth conversation shows responsiveness.
This approach benefits your business in several ways. It ensures that those who make calls know that the person on the other end received the call and wants to do something about it. Plus, focusing on responsiveness means nothing slips through the net when relying on phone communication in a WFH environment.
The beginning and end of any phone conversation impact the direction taken following the call and are more important than anything that happens in between.
The first 30 seconds of a call represent an opportunity for employees to create a positive perception when speaking to others. Tone, voice, word choice, and maintaining focus on the call’s subject all feed into this perception. If somebody answers with a rattled tone, this indicates a lack of confidence to the person on the other end.
Similarly, failing to stick to the call’s purpose may show that the call recipient is more concerned with themselves than solving the problem the call addresses.
The final 30 seconds solidify each person’s opinion about the call. Assuming you’re the call recipient, simple acts like thanking the other person for calling and reviewing the problem you discuss go a long way. These acts demonstrate that you care about the other team members’ opinions and want to help them with the issue they’ve raised.
Of course, the importance of the beginning and end of the call does not mean the middle doesn’t matter. But starting and ending on the right foot creates more effective phone communication, resulting in happier and more receptive team members.
WFH culture represents a challenge for many. It forces people to rely on conversation styles that are less personal than they might be used to.
However, proper phone communication techniques help to overcome these challenges.
The techniques shared in this article help you create a more collaborative WFH culture. But if you need further help or wish to implement a WFH phone system, Telephono can help. Book your free trial today to discover how Telephono enhances WFH phone communication.
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