Importance of summarizing the points talked over phone

Phone conversation includes of two individuals each at opposing end using informal speech to express their ideas, views or to pass some information about a topic for general discussion, service or work (Bell & Smith, 2006). This is a lot different from any other spoken form of communication like speech or a presentation where you tailor the contents according to the audience to ensure that they understand the ideas, views in a clear, easy to understand language.

Even if telephonic conversation is one of the fastest and the easiest way to interact. Being overconfident and thinking that you can memorize everything will often backfire. At times the audio quality could be unclear while it’s equally possible to understand what the other person said in your own way which might be different from what the other person told (Dubovskaya, 2013). Thus, it’s important to make sure that you do have a summary of the points that you’ve covered in a phone conversation. Here are few more points to stress it further:

• To ensure that you understood what the other person wants and not the way you want to understand. Given that the network quality in Nepal isn’t always good, at times you might not be able to hear the other person clearly which is very easy to result in miscommunication. Also, a person can be doing anything during a phone call so if the points are summarized at the end, which reduces the risk of having a significant misunderstanding.

• Helps you pass the message quick for action. Maybe you’re working in the restaurant business and the other person calls for ordering food, it’s smart to summarize what the other person said as that way you’ll be able to ensure that’s what the other person wants is what you wrote down as well. That helps to reduce the error of sending a wrong food and hampering the user experience.

• Helps to remember the key points during the phone conversation. Especially during the long phone conversation, it’s hard to remember all the things discussed during the talk so summarizing helps to ensure that such things doesn’t happen.

• To ensure that the correct information is gathered. You may be on a call to get information about a certain car or any product. Summarizing everything at the end will let you know that you’ve the key details jotted down and not missed. While otherwise, few of the key details could quite easily be missed.

• Ensure that both the person are on the same page and understand things in the same way. This also helps each other recall what has been discussed during the conversation to freshen up the memory.

References

Bell, A. H., & Smith, D. M. (2006). Management Communication. New York: Wiley.

Dubovskaya, O. (2013). Business telephone communications. Modern Communication Studies , 2 (3), 21-24.

Listening is a form of communication but not all things that are heard is registered. People have very sensitive attention span and cannot catch everything that’s been said even though they hear it. "The human brain has the capacity to digest as much as 400 words per minute of information. But even a speaker from New York City talks at around 125 words per minute. That means three-quarters of your brain could very well be doing something else while someone is speaking to you. (Sullivan & Thompson, 2013)”

The importance of summarizing the points covered in a phone conversation are as follows

1. Jotting down phone conversation will help you remember all the points discussed. You may forget the points discussed in the beginning.

2. Phone conversation can be problematic with network problems and voices may be difficult to understand so avoiding stressful situation after putting down the phone, jotting down points helps summaries the conversation.

3. Writing helps you understand the point being spoken. Listening may not understand everything. Also all the points being said cannot be remembered so writing the points helps.

4. What they are saying may not be what you are understanding. So writing down will show if the points are related to the topic.

5. People have a lot of things they are thinking in their mind. Getting sidetracked for just a moment will miss what is being said. So if you cannot write a point you will be compelled to ask the speaker to repeat themselves.

These are some reasons which is why it is good to write down points in a conversation.

Reference
Sullivan , B., & Thompson, H. (2013, May 3). Now Hear This! Most People Stink at Listening [Excerpt] . Retrieved from Scientific American: scientificamerican.com/article/pla...

Communication refers to the exchange of information from a different medium from one entity or group to another through mutually understanding (Rafael & Ames, 2009). In a telephone conversation, two individuals use informal speech to exchange their view, ideas or information about the topic or the work purpose. The most important thing in the telephone conversation is that both parties should be clear and understand each other’s speaking (Mary, 2018).

We all think about phone skill are not important, we think it’s pretty easy to talk about the phone. But here, I just tell about phone conversation is extremely important because it maintains a level of confidence with the person talking too. In the phone conversation, you are invisible to that person like a simple smile, and your hand gesture and your facial expression would not help in a phone conversation, so it is essential to have these effective communication skills so that you speak right and other people enjoy to talking with you.

Here I am going to mention a couple of tips that would help you to talk right over the phone conversation.

1. Mention your name when you answer the call

The first tips is mention your name when you answer the call. Now it can be really disorient to the caller if he/she does not know whom is talking too. So it is important for you to mention your name. And also make sure you have a nice, happy, friendly tone when you answer the call. Don’t sound over excited for example, Hello dude what’s up? That could be too much so just have a nice and friendly tone so that the person feels positive about talking to you. This will get conversation startup well.

2. Speak clearly

Why this is important for you pronounce your words well. Of course, please do not avoid mumbling or talking to fast. This would not help to call to understand what you are saying. So it’s important for you to pronounce your words correctly. Also, the possibility must be caller hard for hearing or maybe does not understand the language really well so that you are little more audible to the caller, raising voice, does not mean that you stand to scream. Raise it little with sweet fine tone so that is audible enough.

3. Use words that make sense to the person you’re speaking with

Third thing I have explained here is use your word right. Now it does not make sense if you are talking to your boss and you are talking to your grandfather and you used the slang words like "Hey what’s up man, are you having fun?” it does not make any sense so be careful whom is your caller. Your boss and your grandfather think you are not in fit and you have not proper understanding about communication, make sure you use in right language, right words if you are talking to someone professionally. Please use the respectful and professional words. You can’t end up using these slang words. So use your word right or that fit to your listener.

4. Listen Actively

The fourth thing I am going to describe is listener actively, what’s the point of having the conversation if you are not listening to the person. Well you are not listening to the person. You not trying to understand when he/she says, what are you going answer him/her? So it is important for you to listen carefully, understand so that you acknowledge. Also do not interrupt your caller. Interrupting people can be really rude at time. To avoid interrupting people.

5. Use good and descriptive language

The fifth important point I am going to describe is use good and descriptive language. Now you have explained something to the caller you need to brush-up your communication skills, please do that so it help the caller to understand what you are talking. For example, you have to describe something, make use of example because you are invisible to him, hand gesture & your facial expression would not work. So try giving example, example of some shapes, some color or etc. for example, imagine that you are on a radio and you are the one talking in and people are listing to you that would kind of encourage you to sound little more interesting. In this way, we listen to the radio, we can’t see the person who’s talking, but it’s really enjoying what they talk because the way that they described the way they talk its super fun. Try to the little more descriptive so that the color understand and enjoys talking to you.

6. Keep a pen and a paper handy

The last point I am going to talk about you is keep a pen and a paper handy. Now these are time you might just forget, you would get speechless and you don’t know what to talk to the person. So, it’s always best to keep a pen and a paper in front of you. You might also forget the caller talk to about so it’s just important for note down things that would help you to remember.

You follow all of those six tips, people love talking to you. You would never have a hard time for communicating with people over the phone.

References
Mary, N. (2018). The Importance of Telephone Communication in Business. Chron.

Rafael, B., & Ames, M. (2009). Family Communication: Phone Conversations with Children. IDC 2009 - Workshops .

The skill of summarizing is an essential yet often overlooked step in the communication process. Whether people realize it or not, summarizing can add a whole new dimension to verbal communication both in a business and personal setting (Suzanne, 2013). A good summary can verify that people understand each other, can make communications more efficient, and can ensure that the highlights of communications are captured and utilized.

For instance; nowadays, phone conversation is taking as one of the best tool with the change in the time. It is one of the oldest and widely used mechanical media of oral communication. Also, it is a simple part of everyday business life: just pick up the telephone, dial a number, and talk. Because of this conversation, it helps to save our time, money and effort (Pangaro, 2009). When we talk in the phone it is necessary to summarize the points that we have covered in phone conversations that means retelling only the important parts of the story or conversation in own words in short line.

Besides it helps in following way which can define as

• Helps to refresh each other’s memory of what has been discussed and restate any contracts or agreements made during the conversation.

• Checks whether the ideas are being conveyed to each person’s understanding.

• Refresh the memory about what has been discussed during the phone conversation.

• To check either each person understands of what has been said to that point.

• To note any special and important points from the conversation that you feel need to be highlighted (Harper, 2014).

Summarizing is defined as taking a lot of information and creating a condensed version that covers the main points. In simple word, it is recollecting the important points of the conversation and making the point that covers major points during conversation. Summary helps to know what information or conversation has occurred, discussed, agreed, during the discussion. Sharing the summary helps to know the major points that occurred during the meeting or conversation so that next person can understand what has happened and keeping summary or summarizing helps to remember or recall what happens during whole session of conversation. In order to mitigate this adversity, summarizing the conversations in between helps us to reinstate our agendas. It is also extremely necessary to keep the conversation under the topic. The summary helps to keep the conversation in the track and avoid the irrelevant topics.

References

Harper, M. N. (2014). The Importance of Telephone Communication in Business . Demand Media: Small Business.

Suzanne, M. (2013). Learn How Summarizing Any Conversation. In network marketing. Retrieved from network-marketing-mlm-success-syst...

Telephone helps us to reach to the distant people easily and quickly. Even in business, telephone conversations are used widely. Sometimes, telephone conversation may be lengthy and we fail to remember the details talked over phone. Summarizing the conversation helps to recall the important points by repeating the information shared throughout the call (KomBea, 2017).

Summarizing the points covered in phone conversation is useful because of the following reasons:

1. When the telephone conversation is lengthy, we may be distracted in between and miss out on some points. Since there is no physical presence, the chances of people being less attentive over phone is very high. So summarizing the conversation helps to identify the major information that we cannot afford to miss.

2. After the telephone conversation, we may need to perform follow-up actions like making other calls, sending e-mail, writing proposals or arranging a meeting. Summing up the conversation provides us with clear idea about what to do next.

3. It helps to avoid miscommunication. Sometimes due to different barriers, it is possible that the receiver may not receive the information as intended by the caller (Bellamy, 2012). The caller and receiver may have understood the things differently. So the summary of the telephone conversation helps to verify that the things are communicated as intended and both parties understood the same thing.

4. Sometimes we may go out of the track or lose the focus in telephone conversation and miss to communicate important information. So summarizing helps to identify the missing information and add those in the conversation.

5. Sometimes incorrect information may be transferred over phone without our realization. This is highly possible in case of communicating numerical values. Thus summarizing helps to identify the errors and confirm the facts.

6. It is an act of complementing the caller. When the receiver summarizes the phone conversation, it demonstrates that the information was well received and processed on real time (Bell & Smith, 2006). It helps to build trust and confidence among the communicating parties. In addition, summarizing is the best way to conclude a telephone conversation.

References

Bell, A. H., & Smith, D. M. (2006). Management Communication. New York: Wiley.

Bellamy, M. (2012, September 14). A Good Practice: Summarize the Conversation . Retrieved from China Sourcing Information Center: chinasourcinginfo.org/2012/09/14/a...

KomBea. (2017, June 22). 4 Reasons Why Summarization Improves the Customer Experience . Retrieved from KomBea: kombea.com/blog-and-news/4-reasons...

DISCUSS THE TELEPHONE TECHNIQUE YOU WOULD USE TO HANDLE A LARGE NUMBER OF INCOMING CALLS