Risks to review, not inevitable failings
Reception mistakes are not necessarily a sign of carelessness. They can stem from an implicit organisation: everyone does things “as usual”, with no written rule. The situations below are risks: their real effect depends on your trade, your customers and the moment of the call.
You can use the list as a review grid. Mentally replay three recent calls, or make test calls to your own switchboard, and look at where the caller might have hesitated, repeated themselves, hung up or been left without an answer.
A practical way to go about it is to listen to the call from the outside. Ring your own number from another phone, at a busy time, with a simple question and then a question outside your scope. Note the number of rings before pickup, the greeting, what the caller is told and how the request is noted down. This few-minute test gives a concrete view of the caller’s experience.
Waiting and transfers: the flow mistakes
The unannounced wait is a first risk: you say “please hold” and disappear, without saying how long and without coming back on the line. The caller does not know whether they are being heard or whether the call has been cut off, and may hang up. The habit: state the reason and the approximate length, offer a callback if the wait drags on, and come back on the line regularly.
The blind transfer is the other risk: you pass the caller to a colleague without introducing them or checking that the colleague is available. The caller may have to repeat everything, land on voicemail or be passed from extension to extension. The habit: introduce the caller and their reason in one sentence, make sure the person takes the call, and have a fallback (structured message-taking) in case they cannot be reached.
A third flow risk is internal jargon. Saying an acronym or the name of a file that only the team understands, or asking the caller to “call back later” with nothing else on offer, can give the impression of being brushed off. Prefer concrete wording: say when you can be reached, offer to note down the request and confirm the callback number by repeating it aloud.
A message not passed on, or only half passed on
A message taken on a scrap of paper, without a full name, callback number or reason, is hard to use. The risk grows when it is passed on verbally to someone who is absent the next day, or when nobody is named to call back. The caller took the trouble to describe their request; if it gets lost, they may turn to another provider or call back several times.
The habit: standardise message-taking with a few fields (name, number, reason, degree of urgency as expressed by the caller, time of the call), name who calls back and within what time, and leave a trace the whole team can consult rather than an individual piece of paper.
One last point on messages: their confidentiality. A message displayed on a shared screen, read aloud in an open-plan office or sent to a group chat can expose information the caller thought they were confiding to one person only. Limit circulation to those who need it and, if you use a shared tool, set the access rights.
Introducing yourself, informing, knowing how to say you do not know
Not introducing yourself properly is an image risk: the caller is not sure they have dialled the right number. Answering a question you do not know the answer to is another, more serious one: an improvised price, a promised deadline or an unvalidated technical opinion can commit the business. A single honest sentence along the lines of “I can’t answer you on that point, I’ll pass your request on and someone will call you back” is better.
Also think about informing callers. If calls are recorded, the CNIL (France’s data protection authority) states that callers must be told, in particular by a spoken notice at the start of the conversation. And when you take down someone’s contact details, Article 13 of the GDPR, the EU data protection regulation known in France as the RGPD, provides for informing the person at the time of collection, in particular of the controller’s identity, the purposes, the recipients and the retention period. A short sentence, prepared in advance, can serve as a first level of spoken information, supplemented by a pointer to fuller information (website, information notices).
Closing the loop: callbacks, hours, menus
A broken callback promise can damage the caller’s trust. Only promise what you can keep, and check the list of pending callbacks at the end of the day. Hours matter too: a greeting that does not say when you can be reached leaves the caller in uncertainty. As for multiple-choice voice menus, they can lose the caller if they are too long; auditing them is the subject of a separate article.
Alyas, an AI voice agent, can apply some of these habits on the calls it takes: at the start of the call it announces that it is an AI and that the call is recorded, answers using the information you have given it and, if it does not know, says so and offers to pass the request on. Contact capture, transcript and summary arrive in your workspace. The trial is free for 10 days, with no card required.
Frequently asked questions
Which phone answering mistake should I correct first?
There is no universal ranking: it all depends on your business. A good starting point is message-taking, because it determines the callback. If messages are incomplete or nobody is in charge of them, your other reception efforts lose part of their effect.
How can I spot these mistakes without a measuring tool?
Replay a few recent calls and make test calls to your own line, at different times of the day. Note the places where a caller would have had to repeat themselves, wait without explanation or hang up without an answer.
What should I say when I do not know the answer?
Say so simply, avoid improvising a price, a deadline or a technical opinion, and offer to pass the request on, stating who will call back and when. This sentence can be written in advance in your reception instructions.