hello everybody and welcome back to love English I'm Sabrah your British
University English teacher now we know guys but lots of you that are watching
us are using English at work you're using English in a professional context
and part of that might involve answering calls and speaking on the phone or you
might even have a job which is specifically related to using English on
the phone you could be working in a call centre or in telemarketing or something
like that so whether you're looking to improve
your general business telephone English or if your job is specifically related
to speaking English on the phone this video will definitely help you it's
going to improve your confidence and give you lots of phrases that you'll
have ready up your sleeve to use
as always guys don't forget to subscribe hit the notification bell so you don't
miss one of our lessons and of course also you can check out our website and
you can follow us on our social media now one thing that is certainly very
important about speaking on the phone is politeness it's very important to be
polite sometimes you're going to be taking someone's time or perhaps
somebody is calling you regarding an issue and they're upset and so it's very
necessary to be polite so we're going to be looking a lot at that right so number
one so the first thing you need to know is that when you are making a call it is
really important to say who you are so normally we would say hello this is
Sabrah or if you want to be even more polite you could say good morning good
afternoon or good evening and then you want to say the reason for your call so
for example you could say I'm calling because or you could say I was hoping to
speak to so you might say I'm calling because there's been an issue with your
phone line or I was hoping to speak to Miss Reeves is she there? I was hoping to
speak to so let's go through that again you could start by saying good morning
this is Sabrah I'm calling because there's been an issue on your phone line
or you could say good morning this is Sabrah I was hoping to speak to
now one thing that I missed there guys was if the call is very formal so if you
don't know the people it might be a good idea to say your second name so you
might want to say good morning this is Peter Jones I was hoping to
speak to Peggy Reeves for example so something like this so you might want to
say your full name number two now if you do want to speak to a specific person
you can say I was hoping to speak to or you could make this even more formal by
saying would you mind seeing if Peggy Reeves is available would you mind
seeing if Peggy Reeves is available number three if you're calling from a
company you will need to say this at the beginning of the call so you might want
to say I am calling from npower or I'm calling
from EE so basically whoever you're working for whoever the call is on the
behalf of so who it is for, you should say that at the beginning of the call so people
are very quickly clear about where the call is coming from do make sure at the
beginning your voice is particularly clear to avoid people getting confused
and hanging up some people might think I don't know what this is about I've got
no idea what they said and hang up you want to avoid that so speak clearly and
confidently now guys if you're enjoying this lesson but you're starting to feel
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don't miss this opportunity go down to the description box and download the app
to get your free trial with our code number four again going back to the
politeness thing it's important to ask if it's a good time to speak the person
may be busy you may have caught your colleague at a difficult time they might
be in a meeting so it's very important to say is this a good time to speak or
would you mind suggesting a suitable time for you to speak something like
this very important to say are you available now is this a good time to
speak it shows that you are being understanding about their time and
you're being polite okay so now we're looking at reasons for your call how to
introduce reasons for your call so sometimes you might want to call your
colleague and tell them about a new opportunity or you might need to call
customers and tell them about latest offers promotions things which are
available to them or maybe be trying to sell something to them so there's a
couple of ways that we can do this you could say I'd like to introduce to you
the idea of having a partnership between our company and yours or I was hoping to
discuss with you the new budget now if you're trying to sell something or you
want to tell somebody about the promotions your company is offering you
could say would you be interested in hearing about our latest offers would
you be interested in hearing about our latest offers now if they say no you
could always say okay is there a better time to call you back something like
this now if it's between colleagues and you want to talk to them about something
specifically you can introduce this again by saying I was hoping to get the
chance to discuss or I was hoping to chat through I was hoping to chat
through the new project with you I feel like it would be good to discuss it
together number seven now if someone is calling you and they have a problem or
something like this of course it is very important to say
how may I assist you how may I help you or how may I assist you how may I assist
you is even more formal even more polite, of course sometimes you will not be the
person dealing with the call and this means you have to put the call through
to another person or a different department so in this case you might say
I'm sorry you've got the wrong Department
wait a minute I'm just going to put you through to refunds for example so one
moment I'll put you through to or thank you for your patience I'm just going to
put you through to and then you say the department now if you're dealing with
customer service it will be very common to have customers ringing you that are
unhappy about something but I know I have sometimes been that angry customer
who is upset because my refund hasn't been processed and so I have been a
little bit cross with the person on the other side of the phone now in these
cases it's very important to calm the person down so it's a good idea to say
something like I'm really sorry to hear about the issues you've been dealing
with that doesn't sound good we'll do everything we can to sort this out for
you today we'll do everything we can to sort this out for you today immediately
the customer is going to feel reassured they're going to feel like ah
this person understands and they want to help me so it's a really nice phrase and
if you use that guys you might find your customers calmed down more quickly and
that the call is more pleasant now it's very common as well to have to put
people on hold which means you have to put them through to music or whatever it
is while you go and find the right person for them to speak to or while you
research the issue or anything like this and this can happen in all kinds of
businesses so to put someone on hold so it's a really good idea to say I'm
really sorry I'm going to need to put you on hold or would you mind holding
the line I'll be back as soon as I can I'm really sorry I'm going to need to
put you on hold I'll be back as soon as I can then
of course if the person has been waiting a while it's important to thank them for
their time so say thank you for your patience
or if you need them to wait for longer you can say would you mind bearing with
me which means would you mind waiting something like this thank you for your
patience I need to put you on hold again please bear with me now another thing
which is very common with phone conversations is that there is a problem
with the line so in this case you could say I'm really sorry but the line is
breaking up I can't hear you very well is there another number I can call you
on so I'm really sorry but the line is breaking up this means there's a problem
on the line it's not clear another way you could say this is there's
interference on the line I can't quite hear you
so now we're coming to how to end the call and of course hopefully your
customer or your colleague is satisfied and happy so normally we would say
something like thank you very much for your call and is there anything else I
can help you with today? Or is there anything else that I can assist you with
today either of those is very nice and polite but of course it's always nice to
thank the person for their call if they have called you you could also say do
please call us back if you need further assistance do please call us back if you
need further assistance now if you are ending a call with a colleague again
it's nice to thank them for their time but also to say it was great to talk it
was you know a good conversation let's touch base again soon or let's catch up
again soon okay guys they were our 15 phrases for speaking
professionally on the phone we really hope that these are going to be useful
for you and do please tell us any other phrases which you use in your company or
any interesting stories about angry customers and how you calmed them down we're
always very happy to hear from you thank you so much for watching and we'll see
you soon thanks for your time bye bye