Email & Telephone Protocol

Does your firm have a standard protocol in place for answering the phones and/or sending email? If not you are probably losing business. Use these tips as a standards guide for answering the phone and responding to email in your business.

It is important in any sound business to have standards in place so your creative firm is acting out of a place of consistency and professionalism. Use the information below as a working model for your business or modify it to suit your particular needs. Most importantly, implement a version of it so your employee behavior and business goals are congruent.

Telephone protocol — Answering the telephone

We will:

• answer 90% of telephone calls within 15 seconds
• greet the caller in a polite and friendly manner giving the name of the council OR team OR facility AND our name
• if applicable, make notes of the call and address the caller by name if this is appropriate.
• if we transfer the call,  tell the caller which service or person or extension  they are being transferred to
• when transferring a call, pass on the caller’s name and details of their query; we will not just put the call through to a colleague without announcing it first
• when accepting a transferred call,  greet the caller by name and indicate that we know what their call is about
• not transfer a call a second time.   If we cannot deal with it ourselves we will arrange for someone to ring the caller back
• when the caller has contacted us in error, give them the correct number to call where possible
• when we leave our desk, divert our telephone to a colleague and ask them to answer our calls  or use an answer phone
• if we use an answer phone, we will respond to messages within two working days

Email protocol — Dealing with emails

We will:

• reply within one working day;  OR acknowledge emails within one working day and reply in full within ten working days;  or for Freedom of Information requests reply in full within  twenty working days
• use a friendly, courteous and professional tone
• use a professional layout (Upper and lower case letters used correctly, structured in paragraphs, with a proper salutation using the sender’s name and a proper ending.)
• use professional language (No abbreviations such as txtg, no serious grammatical or spelling errors, free of jargon, written in plain, accurate English)
• use standard email font settings and avoid any personalisation such as additional graphics or special effects
• ensure that our name, job title and telephone number are included automatically on every e-mail we send
• activate the out of office message as a matter of routine when we know that we will be absent for more than one day.  We will leave a courteous, professional message and give the contact details of a colleague who can be contacted in our absence

None of the above applies to spam messages which should simply be deleted.