Many industries such as insurance companies, financial institutions, and credit card companies rely extensively on telephone interviews to conduct their investigations. There are a number of different skills required to conduct telephone interviews versus a face to face interview. For this reason, we contracted with Daniel Marsano, a leading expert in telephone interviewing techniques, to help write this course. This three hour course is our most frequently re-ordered audio course by the same company -- after hearing the course they want to expose the techniques to other divisions or investigators in different locations.

The training program is accompanied with a 48 page study guide and includes the following topics:

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO TELEPHONE INTERVIEWING

• Limitations and benefits of a telephone interview
• Goals of the telephone interview
• Appropriate and inappropriate use of telephone interviews
• When and where to call
• Starting the interview
• Establishing rapport with the subject
• Procedural considerations
• Personality traits of a successful interviewer

PART II: BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

• Channels of communication
• General assessment versus specific event assessments
• Evaluating attitudes
• Psychological principles of verbal behavior
• Truthful behavior symptoms
• Deceptive behavior symptoms
• Response latency
• Voice characteristics
• Erasure behaviors
• Psychological principles of response content
• Evaluating memory
• Evaluating segments of an account
• Evaluating pronouns
• Phrases which indicate edited information
• Evaluating logic within a response

PART III: QUESTION TECHNIQUES

• Interview structure
• The initial open questions
• Techniques to draw out a response
• Asking clarifying questions
• Asking direct questions
• Summary statements
• Linguistic interpretations