Can’t spell your customer’s name? Do this!

hey everyone today i'm going to talk
about
one of the most common problems that
call center newbies experience
when they are taking calls and that is
when they're having a hard time spelling
their customer's
name so the most common question that i
usually hear is
is it okay to ask your customer to spell
her name
and the answer is yes absolutely but
before we talk more about that question
let me give you now the nato phonetic
alphabet
nato by the way means north atlantic
treaty organization
this is the phonetic alphabet that the
military also used and this is the
standard
when you're spelling things out over the
phone this is the standard so you can
avoid using words that are a little bit
unprofessional
because it would not be so professional
if you're going to say f
for felony or s for story so in a call
center setting
this phonetic alphabet is especially
important and you have to
memorize this you have to know all these
like the back of your hand
so i will now show it to you so you can
screenshot it and memorize it when you
can
let me read it so that's a for alpha b
for bravo
c for charlie d for delta e for echo
f for foxtrot g for golf
h for hotel i for india j for juliet
kilo lima mike november
oscar papa quebec
romeo sierra tango
uniform victor whiskey
x-ray yankee zulu those are the phonetic
alphabets i want you to screenshot them
by the way in nato phonetic alphabet
there's also
phonetic for the numbers from zero to
nine but i'm not going to include that
here because
numbers are quite easy to distinguish
over the phone
one two three four five six seven eight
nine they are pretty easy to recognize
over the phone so i'm not gonna include
that here
because i don't use phonetic with
numbers myself when i was still working
as a call center agent and by the way
another reminder
you might want to change y for yankee
for y for yoke because i have a friend
who was assisting this customer and then
when it came the time for her to say
why for yankee the customer was so
offended
and i searched online and i found out
that
while yankee is generally a safe word or
an okay word
to use there are certain parts in the
u.s where
it could be derogatory or it could be a
little offensive to others
so i don't know um maybe it's just that
one customer
but i definitely have a friend whose
customer was offended when she heard
why for yankee now back to the question
is it okay to have your customers spell
her name
if you don't understand it and the
answer is yes absolutely
but but there's a but you need to make
sure
that you are making it as brief
as possible for her make sure that you
your customer only spells her name or
her email address
once the more she repeats it the more
she's gonna
get annoyed by you and the more your
customer is annoyed by you
she's likely gonna ask for a supervisor
so you really need to master
the phonetic alphabet from a to z
and another tip that i could give you if
your customer is in a hurry
and she's clearly impatient is to not
make her spell every single letter in
her name
depending on the name that she's
spelling this might or might not apply
for example the name steven usually
there are two versions
of this name the steven with a p and a
stephen with a v
in it so in this case you don't have to
ask your customer to spell steven
from s to n what you need to do is to
ask the question
is it a steven with a p or a steven with
a v because you basically already know
how to spell both steven
you just want to make it clear whether
it's a p or a v
so by asking is it a stephen with a v or
a p
then you are sparing your customer
unnecessarily
spelling his name and another way that
you could shorten the spelling time
is to focus on those letters that are
hard to distinguish distinguish
for example a and e they sound a little
similar so you want to always say a for
alpha or e for echo
to differentiate the two and here are
the other sets of letters that you
confuse with with each other
again i'm going to show it to you on the
screen so you can screenshot it and
remember them
so that's s f x t d
b v p m n j
g q u so these letters guys
you need to take note of them you need
to always spell them with their phonetic
alphabets
because if you don't then your customer
is going to hear you differently
and you are going to repeat and repeat
and your customer
is going to be annoyed so when you're
using these letters always use them with
a nato alphabet and if you want to make
it even faster and
if your customer is so impatient then
you can skip the phonetics with some of
the letters that are so
obvious over the phone for example the
letter w there are no other letters in
the alphabet
that sounds similar to w so in this case
it's not necessary for you to say
w for whiskey unless your customer is
hard of hearing and she's really having
a hard time
understanding you then that might be the
exception but most of the time if your
customer has a normal sense of hearing
then saying w is enough you don't have
to say
whiskey to make it to speed up your into
your transaction
and proceed to the most important part
of the call which is the resolution
all right that is all for today if you
have any other questions about call
handling tips
comment down below and i will make a
video about them in the future
bye