Citizen Advice update -Supporting advisers to overcome barriers to giving great telephone advice

Supporting advisers to overcome barriers to giving great telephone advice

The Core Service Development team has published this guidance aimed at supporting advisers and supervisors to give great telephone advice over the phone. The guidance gives some tools, techniques and considerations that may help to overcome some common barriers to giving great quality advice while looking after yourself. It isn’t an exhaustive list but we hope it provides a helpful starting point, and it covers a number of key topics, including:

Different scenarios you might encounter when communicating with clients over the phone
Supporting vulnerable clients over the phone
De-escalating angry calls
Looking after yourself

You can find the resource on the Adviceline Directory under ‘Adviser training’. However, it’s not Adviceline specific – we have created this guidance so that it supports telephone advice across our services.

We’d be keen to hear any feedback so that we can use it to develop this guidance and make it as useful as possible. If you have suggestions, please let us know by emailing core-servicedevelopment@citizensadvice.org.uk