‘Telephobia’: U.K. college helps students tackle growing fear of phone calls

A college in U.K. is helping young people combat the growing fear of making or taking telephone calls, or “telephobia,” by coaching them in confidence and etiquette.

Liz Baxter, one of the career advisers at Nottingham College, said it’s become increasingly obvious that students aren’t comfortable with promoting themselves through phone calls, even when it comes to recruitment.

“They’re happy using the phone for any other form of communication except actually making and receiving audio calls,” Baxter said during an interview with CTV Your Morning. “It has just not been a part of their experience, or their skill set so far.”

However, she believes young people are not to blame, they just haven’t had the opportunity to develop those skills.

“Nowadays, you call your bank, you will automatically go through an AI assistant,” Baxter said. “If you make a phone call to an organization, its some alternated AI system that answers.”

She said the coaching program makes students use scripts and practice having two-way phone conversations in different scenarios.

The students are given guidance on different ways to increase their confidence, like getting themselves in a safe zone, making sure they won’t get interrupted, doing their research beforehand, cheat codes and prompts to help them practice conversing.

Baxter said the students are expected to make at least one audio phone call a week. They begin with people they’re familiar with and later attempt conversing with people they don’t know.

She adds that this method of helping students get over telephobia is being received quite positively at Nottingham College.

“This is an overwhelming area of need for us,” she said.