For any administrative or executive assistant, you have one basic goal, making your boss more efficient and productive. That’s it. Everything you do during your workday should have this one basic goal behind it. One primary way to save your boss time and help her be more efficient is to properly screen calls.
Now, when we talk about screening calls, we usually think about sales calls. And, yes, it is important to screen out unwanted sales calls. But screening calls is about much more than just blocking people selling things you don’t want. It’s also about redirecting calls that your boss doesn’t really need to handle.
Let’s face it, the higher up in the organization your boss is, the more of a generalist he’s going to be. Here’s an example. I worked for the Director of Human Resources at a local university. While he was very knowledgeable about HR in general and the policies of the university in particular, he probably only knew general information regarding the health benefits provided. If you had a specific question about health benefits, you probably needed to speak with someone in the Benefits Department rather than the Director of all HR.
And yet, people regularly called the Director of HR with these types of questions. Why? Because they knew his name and were high enough up in the university hierarchy to demand the attention of the Director. Their impression is that they would get faster service by calling his office than by calling the front desk of HR. The truth is, they would get faster service from the front desk, because they are used to taking those calls and transferring them to the appropriate person. But you know how higher-ups tend to be.
So now we come to your role in all of this. When you answer a call for your boss, your immediate response should not be to ring it through. Instead, your response should be, once you know who the caller is, to ask what the call is concerning. Because if they only want to ask about a specific health benefit, you can then divert them to the benefits manager, who can likely answer their question. Which, of course, is the same thing your boss would do once she takes the call. My usual line is, “May I ask what your call is concerning?”
Voila! You have now saved your boss the several minutes it would have taken him to do the same thing. And you’ve provided the caller with good customer service, since odds are your boss wasn’t available at that moment and the caller would have to have just waited for a return call. Add up all those minutes over the course of days and weeks, and you can see how properly screening and redirecting calls gives your boss much needed time to work on her real duties.
What are your strategies for screening and redirecting calls? Leave a comment and let us know.
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wow…this is just what i needed…my boss has been having a problem getting time to work due to the frequent calls and visitors…now i can get him more time to due more productive things than handle things that can be done by others in our organization. thanks for the tip
I have just printed a copy for the secretary here. Really grateful this insightful article
Nice tips. You really have to know the technical skills of your boss to apply this. But I’ve been wondering how to turn away uninvited visitors gracefully. It seems that the only way for us to do this is to either lie that Im outside or in a meeting or whatever. Visitors expect to be treated well since they took the effort to come to the office; however, that’s not always the case since they have to abide by the boss’ availability.
You do need to know the technical skills of your boss, but that is part of being a good admin, learning those types of things. Your boss can help with that. Let him know that you want feedback if calls are inappropriate for him and who they would be appropriate for. It’s always a learning curve with each new boss.
As for uninvited visitors, my usual reply (which is the same for callers) is that the boss is “unavailable at the moment”. I ask them what they are there for and if someone else can assist them. Of course, if the boss has an open door policy, it’s harder if they can just stick their head in the door and see you at your desk working.
I’ve always tried to keep work periods sacrosanct for my boss. Managers spend so much time in meetings that they must have some uninterrupted time during the day to get work done. There must be time when they are “unavailable.
I’m glad you found it helpful. Good luck handling all those people.
I worked for school principal who took his time in calling back parents….disgruntled parents. I would always say he was not available and take messages (as he told me) but he would not get back to these parents for like days! By the end of a day, the parent is so mad they are yelling at me.
I am up for another job at a school. What do I do if this happens again?
Do you keep a copy of all the messages you give him? I like to use a message book with the npr copies, so I always have a copy of all messages I’ve taken.
If you keep a copy of the messages, it’s very easy to follow up with the boss every few hours to ask if he’s returned those calls or not. One admin professional who has a blog calls herself the Paid, Professional Nag. I think it’s an appropos title for someone in our line of work. Sometimes we have to play the boss’s conscience to keep him on his toes when he wants to avoid a particular duty.
It’s possible that he isn’t avoiding returning the call, but just forgets them in the press of other duties. Whether that’s the case or not (we can be generous and give him the benefit of the doubt), your reminders can help spur him to get those calls made. This is especially easy with a new boss, because if you start it from the beginning, he won’t see it as a change in behavior. If he (or she) asks why you ask, just tell him that you like to keep track that messages are handled, just in case there’s any questions later. And, of course, in a school system you like to have accountability, so he’d probably consider it a good idea anyway.
Good luck at the new school.
I only have a virtual assistant, but the thing that really changed the way I handled my business was after meeting with her personally and sharing your stories.
It’s not like Im a super busy person but I often receive about 100-200 emails daily, its really good to only read the important ones and stop wasting time skipping the unimportant ones.
The key here is to find someone that can act on his/her own knowledge, for example if she received an bill by emal she can simply keep records of it and ask me for the green light to pay and thats it. I dont have to login, put my info, pay, confirm payment, etc. They have all that information with them and if you trust them it’ll work.
You’ve hit the nail on the head here. This is exactly the benefit of having a good assistant, virtual or otherwise. They take things off your hands so you can concentrate your efforts on necessary tasks. This is why the partnership between assistant and boss is so important.