Tip: Exceptional Phone Service Can Make Your Child Care Center Stand Out from the Crowd.
Attracting families to your child care center can be a challenge, especially if your center is located in an area with numerous other options. When it comes to making a good impression on prospective families, it’s important to consider phone etiquette. With all of the understandable focus on creating and maintaining polished, professional websites, remember that phone contact can be just as crucial to parents who are narrowing down their choice between several different child care centers.
Making sure your front desk staff and other team members are well versed on proper phone protocol will also go a long way toward making sure you retain the students you already have, and that their families are thoroughly satisfied with your service.
Each Staff Member Should Receive Phone Etiquette Training
The purpose of this article series will be to break down some of the dos and don’ts of how your staff members approach telephone contacts. It’s vital that each and every staff member who will ever be answering the phone receives some sort of basic training in this area. Ideally, it should be the focus of some of their initial staff training when they’re first hired to work at your facility. If any of them have somehow missed that step, or could use a refresher, don’t hesitate to go back and review these basic guidelines with them. It may even be helpful to keep a copy of your phone etiquette list, or an abbreviated set of guidelines, close to each phone in your child care center.
Phone Etiquette is Part of Common Decency
If you’ve ever found yourself to be the unfortunate recipient of an unprofessional business call, you know how much of a priority this type of training needs to be. It can truly make or break your ability to run a successful business. The thought of your front desk personnel turning people against your center due to a lack of good manners should be unacceptable to any competent child care center director.
Much of the art of mastering phone etiquette overlaps with a person displaying good manners in general. These include offering a warm greeting, maintaining a pleasant tone of voice, and trying to limit interruptions. Such courteous attitudes and actions should be a part of your staff members’ routine when it comes to their everyday interactions at the workplace, whether in person or on the phone.
Strive to Follow Your Own Phone Etiquette Guidelines at All Times
One of the keys to making sure your child care center’s staff phone training is a success is for you to lead by example. If you as the director make a point of consistently modeling top-notch phone etiquette, your staff members will be more likely to reflect that same type of professional image. In our next article in this series, we’ll take a closer look at some of the specific ways your staff members should initiate conversations as well as respond to questions while they’re on the phone.
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JackrabbitCare
Jackrabbit Care software provides childcare centers and daycare businesses with smart online solutions for billing, sign ups, registration & business management. Jackrabbit’s leading online child care management software delivers an unparalleled combination of speed, reliability and smart customer-focused solutions. Learn more at www.JackrabbitCare.com or call them at (704) 895-4034.
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