Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a telephone operator and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Telephone Operator is responsible for providing information by accessing alphabetical and geographical directories and assisting customers with special billing requests like charges to the third party, credits or refunds for incorrectly dialed numbers or poor connections.
Essential functions of this position include interrupting busy lines if an emergency warrants, keeping records of all calls placed and received and of any related toll charges, monitoring automated systems for placing collect calls and intervene for a caller needing assistance, offering special assistance to persons like those who are incapable to dial or who are caught up in emergency situations, observing signal lights on switchboards and dialing or pressing switches to make connections, providing relay service for hearing impaired users.
Core Skills Required to be a Telephone Operator
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A telephone operator should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Phone Skills:
Phone Skills are useful to present a professional company image through the telephone to the customers while making them feel well informed and appreciated without necessarily seeing their faces.
A Telephone Operator is required to master and project an enthusiastic natural tone to make both the customers and staff feel comfortable during the conversation while creating room for a productive and friendly exchange.
Safety at work:
Safety is being protected from hurt or other non-desirable outcomes that may tend to overrule a situation and cause damages of different kinds.
A Telephone Operator must learn to keep the organization safe from different risks by developing a high sense of alertness that detects danger from afar and stops it before it causes risk, danger or injury in the organization.
Cooperation with colleagues:
Cooperation is the process of working with groups or teams for a common mutual benefit as opposed to working in competition or for selfish ambition.
A Telephone Operator should learn the art of creating a mutually beneficial exchange among the employees that dwells much on cooperation for the same mutual benefit with adequate resources for all to use rather than creating a spirit of competition.
Creativity:
Creativity is the skill of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality through the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between unrelated phenomena and generate solutions.
A Telephone Operator should be able to think, then reproduce ideas and act on them to bring awareness of what was currently hidden and point to a new life that will progress the business to new heights.
Dedication to Work:
Dedication to Work is a devotion or setting aside the scheduled time that you are required to work each day consistently without fail as well as being on time and giving 100% of your efforts to doing quality work.
A Telephone Operator ought to be dependable and set an example for the rest of the workforce by showing up for work on time every day consistently and producing quality work while applying company policies and business strategies.
Handling Stress:
Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.
A Telephone Operator needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.
Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty:
Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty is an active effort which helps in developing set ways for your thoughts, actions, and habits empowering your to stick to your decisions.
A Telephone Operator needs to learn the secret of fostering the development of self-discipline amongst the employees by clearly defining the expectations, staying in sync with the work related events and propagate result yielding ideas that employees suggest.
Business Etiquette:
Business Etiquette is a basic framework of rules set by companies to ensure and allow you to understand the way you should conduct yourself in the professional world.
A Telephone Operator must establish the tone for proper behavior in the workplace by making sure all the distinct boundaries are laid out for everyone to follow and understand the implications of defaulting.
Customer Service:
Customer Service is the ability to cater for the needs of the client by providing excellent customer service without compromise.
A Telephone Operator must understand that pleasing customers is directly connected to the success of the business, therefore, must create a superior customer experience culture in the company that every employee should follow in ensuring all the customers are treated as they should.
Diversity Awareness:
Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.
A Telephone Operator ought to successfully identify the various types of diversity presented in his company to be able to benefit from these individual differences in the hope of improving the success of his team and encourage the team members to become aware of these qualities and use them appropriately.
Hard Skills Required to be a Telephone Operator
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A telephone operator should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.