How to Be Organized at Work – Telephone Organization
By Andy Heath
For those of you that work in an administrative capacity, you know the importance of being organized, and you know how hard it can be when something falls through the cracks. I am not an unseasoned administrative employee, so I’m going to share some of my tidbits with you on organization.
There are essentially three parts to organizing administrative work, and I’m going to post each of these in its own separate post over the next several days.
- Telephone Organization.
- Paperwork Organization
- Follow-up Organization
Telephone Organization
Many administrative assistants are responsible for making a number of phone calls throughout the business day. I’m sure you have run across situations where you had to leave a voicemail. In some cases you might be making 20-30 calls per day, and only you will be responsible for keeping up the pace. Before you learn how to keep up with these call backs, it is important to learn the nature of telephone work. Here goes…
The Nature of Telephone Work
Every call has a purpose. Write that down if you have to because it’s extremely important. Every call has a purpose. It’s safe to say that once you accomplish that purpose, you can hang up the phone. Of course, you might exchange some pleasantries with the other administrative assistant you talk to, but ultimately, every call has its purpose and then there is no further reason to stay on the phone. The purposes of administrative telephone calls are as follows:
- To inform a party of something.
- To receive information.
- To cause some action to occur.
That’s pretty much it. Before you make a telephone call, it’s important to know exactly why you’re calling. To give you an example, one time I had a boss at a law firm that asked me to call and find out if a certain judge would be hearing motions on a certain day. So that is fairly straightforward. The call went something like this:
Me – Good morning. My name is Andy Heath calling from Certain Law Firm, and I was just calling to find out if Judge So-and-so would be hearing motions on August 3, 2008, at 9 A.M.
Other Admin – I think so, but let me check… Yes, he will be.
Me – Thank you. Have a good day.
It is as simple as that. The above is an example of receiving information. Here is an example of giving information…
Me – Good morning, may I please speak with Mary Jones?
Mary – This is she.
Me – Mary, my name is Andy Heath calling from Certain Company. You had called last week asking about when your check for accounting services would be mailed. I just wanted to let you know that we have mailed it today, so you should receive it in the next few days.
Mary – Oh good, thank you for calling.
Me – You’re welcome. Have a good day.
Very simple. The final type of call is to cause some action to take place. Here is a transcript of a call I made to a lady at a company that worked in the Stationery Department –
Me – Good morning Deborah, this is Andy Heath in the Claims Department. We need some legal pads up here, and I wanted to see what time it would be convenient for you that I come down and pick some up.
Deborah – We have some legal pads down here. If you want to come in about half an hour, I can pull them. How many do you need?
Me – One pack of eight should be enough.
Deborah – Alright, I will have it ready for you.
Me – Thanks. I’ll be down in half an hour.
Now I’m sure you know that sometimes there are going to be situations where you’ll make telephone calls that will require more than one of these functions to take place, but the three basic functions of administrative telephone calls are a good thing to keep in mind. Let’ look at a telephone call that integrates all three of these. I’m going to make a call where I need to receive information about an invoice and find out where to mail it. I also need to inform the company representative that its purchase order number has changed. Finally, I will need to ask the representative to fax a copy of the revised invoice to me.
In order to prepare for this call, I might make the following list –
- Inform person that we are disputing a charge on the invoice.
- Find out why charge was assessed and arrive at agreement on whether to pay it.
- If charge is changed, acquire copy of revised invoice by fax.
With this list in my hand, I know exactly how the call is going to go, and this keeps me organized with the purpose of the call in mind. Here is a transcript of the call.
Me – Hello, may I speak to someone in the Billing Department?
Shirley – This is Shirley, and I handle the billing here. How can I help you?
Me – Hi Shirley. My name is Andy Heath, and I’m calling from Certain Company. The reason I’m calling is because I noticed there was a charge on invoice number 12321 that my boss didn’t approve for some of your consulting services. Would I talk to you about that?
Shirley – Yes, let me pull up that invoice. Okay, what charge were you disputing?
Me – I noticed that we were charged three times for an 18 minute telephone call because Mr. Jones and I discussed three different topics, but there was only one 18 minute call.
Shirley – Ahh, yes I see that. Yes, that was our mistake. I will correct that for you.
Me – Thanks Shirley. When you have that corrected, would you mind sending me a copy of the revised invoice? My fax number is 555-555-5555.
Shirley – Yes, I’ve got that written down. I will send it to you this afternoon. Should I make it to your attention?
Me – Yes, that will be fine. That’s all I needed. I appreciate your help, Shirley.
Shirley – Not a problem. Have a good day.
A good administrative assistant stays organized in telephone calls at all times. He or she will make sure to stay in charge of the call and ensure that it is going in the direction of resolution. Every business call should move the company’s business forward in some way. Try to avoid superfluous calls.
Organizing Multiple Calls
Now that you understand the purposes of telephone calls, you will find it easier to avoid making unnecessary calls and you will know how to move calls forward. But sometimes you will find that there are multiple calls to make, and you will need to be prepared for call backs.
There have been times in my work life when I received a call back from another administrative assistant, and I could not remember why I had called her. I would look frantically on my desk for a file, and sometimes the file would not be readily available. Maybe someone else had it. Maybe I had already put it away. Who knows? But regardless these were embarrassing situations because I was not organized enough to be able to recall quickly why I had called someone.
Then I got an idea that I would start a simple Excel spreadsheet that had all the information I needed. The thing I like about Excel spreadsheets is that they are searchable. Just hit Conrol-F and you can enter a text string that you want to search for, and Excel will find it. That means that if you have all the information in a spreadsheet about your calls, you can easily find it.
I usually set up a spreadsheet so that there is a column for the name, telephone number, company, account number if applicable, and a comments section. I don’t set up a separate column for date and time because I just put that into the Comments section. That way if I have to make multiple calls for one point of business, I can simply add the new comments with the new date and time to the comments section.
The Two Purposes of the Spreadsheet
There are two main purposes of the spreadsheet. First, as I said, it gives you a way to keep track of telephone calls when you receive call backs. If Shirley in the telephone call above had called me back, I could have searched for the word Shirley, and it would have taken me to her name. Then I would have known why I had called her and we could immediately conduct our business.
When I receive a call back, I can simply say, “Let me look at my notes and see why I called you. I make so many calls, I often have to write down the reason.” I have found that nearly every administrative assistant I talk to has been appreciative of the fact that I kept notes because it meant that I was being just as respectful of their time as I was being of my own.
The second purpose of the spreadsheet is to follow up on my own calls when administrative assistants don’t call me back. You have probably found that some people are more diligent in returning telephone calls than others, so occasionally I go through the spreadsheet to see about calls that have not been returned. Since I have the date and time already listed, I can see if I need to return the call or not. For non-emergency calls, I generally give two days to return a call before I follow up.
Moving the Calls from the Spreadsheet
I have had some internal conflict on what to do with resolved calls. If I call someone and they call me back with the information that I was requesting, then there is no purpose in keeping that call in my active calls log, as it will just clutter the spreadsheet. At first, I simply deleted any calls that I made, but I have found the better way to handle it is to move the closed calls to another spreadsheet. I simple cut the closed calls from the calls log by highlighting all the cells in that call and hitting Control-X. Then I paste that information into an archive worksheet in the same workbook.
Once I move the closed calls, I can easily see only the calls that are still pending. That keeps my organized in making, receiving, and following up on calls.
The Time Factor
Many of you will argue that keeping notes on so many calls will be a drain on your time, but I encourage you to try this method for a few weeks at least. I think you will find that the time you save from having to look for files or having to try to remember why you call people will more than make up for the time spent documenting your calls.
The next segment of this organization article will be about Paperwork Organization, and that will be posted two days from now.
