The Telephone Game

Home> Customer Service Training Games> The Telephone Game

The telephone game is a good fun way of making a serious point about the importance of good communication in organizations.

Good For

Any training which focuses on communication and communication skills.

It's a fun game and energiser, and facilitated well makes a serious point.

It demonstrates the importance of listening, and checking you have understood correctly before taking action or passing a message on.



Length

The length of this exercise will depend on the number of people involved, but will generally work in 10 minutes with a 5-10 minute debrief.


You will need

This a simple exercise, that doesn't require a lot of materials.


The Telephone Game

Instructions

Get everyone in your training session to sit or stand in a circle.

Tell the group that you are going to start them off by giving the first person in the group a message, which they have to pass on by whispering to the person next to them.

Give the first person a phrase or a message. You can write this on a card, or whisper it, but if you use a card, this must NOT be shown to the rest of the group.

They only get one chance, the phrase cannot be repeated, the receiver of the message must turn to the person next to them and repeat the message which they heard.

Make this exercise pacey, by pressuring the group around time, they are more likely to make a mistake which can be useful to consider in your discussions afterwards. This is especially useful if you are running this in a call centre environment, where queuing calls require people to wrap up calls quickly.

Your message can be something such as:-

"Mrs Windsor will arrive on the 3.30 train, she needs a cart to take her up the hill to see Mr Block"

"He is looking for his khaki's so that he can join Joe and John for the remembrance parade"

"You need to collect the package from SN4 7DF. If no one is there, it will have been left in the bin under the tree"

"Charlie cheered as he chomped on chunks of chicken, while the champion changed chairs"

"Fifteen out of four hundred people who worked in purchasing were promoted between September and November 2014"

The aim is to whisper the message "passing it on" from person to person.

Each person can only say the phrase once, and it must be whispered.

The phrase at the end usually bears no resemblance to the phrase that you gave the first person.

The famous example of this was said to have happened during World War One, when a message passed from the trenches to Head Quarters arrived as "Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance".

The message that had started out was "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance"


Find more customer service training ideas by clicking on the links below

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.

Customer Service Training News

Get your copy of DELIVER, so that you can keep up to date with the resources being added to the site.

Sign up TODAY and get a free download of this video

We do NOT share your details with any other company.

Customer Service Training Activities - free for you to use

Good First Impressions

Customer Focus

Body Language

Games

Alphabet

Customer Service Bingo

Customer Service Charades

Fists**

Just a Minute

Quick Thinking

The Telephone Game

Icebreakers

Finding Common Ground

Guess the Question

The Best Thing

True or False

Who goes where?

Energizers

Fruit Salad

Which do You Prefer?