Customer Service Information |
|
Why Communication Skills Dont Work In Customer Service
Every time my firm conducts communication skills training, we know someone is going to object. "That doesn't work. Everybody's heard of active listening. You can't use that stuff anymore." And we have to admit, there's a lot of truth in that. Everyone has heard of active listening. And it doesn't work for many people much of the time. But communication skills can work for your staff. The problem usually isn't the skills. It's the way people are trained to use them. Learn to use communication skills effectively, and they can create happy customers and higher income. There are two components to good communication skills: (a) the skills themselves, and (b) what you're trying to do (your intention) when you use them. Many employees learn communication skills from manuals. And many manuals emphasize either skills, or intention but not both. And so, much of what we think of as communication skills training fails. Here are a couple of examples: Example 1: How active listening gets a black eye: using good skills, but with the intention to fix or change a customer I was coaching a hospital social worker through a confrontation with a mother who was terribly frightened. The social worker was doing his best to demonstrate active listening. "OK, I get that you're upset. And you want to get out of here. And I want to help you. But you've got to go through this process before you can take your daughter home." The mother didn't react at all the way he'd hoped. "I don't want to hear all this institutional talk," she said. "You leave me alone. I'll sue if I have to!" This appears to be a failure of active listening. And it is, but the problem goes deeper than that. When I paused the encounter and asked the social worker how he thought the mother was feeling and what she needed, he said, "I don't really know. I was busy trying to get her to do what I wanted and think it was her idea." Active listening skills are useful, but they're only tools. They serve the intentions of the person using them. And if you don't teach trainees useful intentions, most will fall back on trying to fix people or change them. So you'll be training your staff to be very effective at letting your customers know they need to be fixed or changed. And your customers will let you know how unpleasant an experience that is. Example 2: How "understand before you are understood" fails: having a useful intention but lacking the skills to communicate it I paused a training scenario just after an angry man blew up at a nurse. I was coaching the nurse through an encounter with a father who felt the staff was trying to hustle him and his son out of the hospital. He told her that he worked all day and came into the hospital all night. And where did she think he was going to get the time to go through training before he took his son home? When I asked her how she thought the man was feeling and what he needed, she suggested that he seemed overwhelmed and afraid, and that he might need some support. When I suggested she might ask the man if that's what he was experiencing, she turned to him and said, "You need an appointment with a social worker. I'll set something up for you." This is a classic failure that comes from understanding your customer, but lacking the skills to communicate it. The nurse could describe the source of the man's anger clearly to me. She had real empathy for him. But she couldn't put her words together in a way he recognized as compassionate. We'd taught her the words, of course. But like most people who learn new skills, she lacked the confidence to use them. So she, like the trainee above, fell back on trying to fix the customer. And he let her know how much he disliked being treated that way. It don't mean a thing if you ain't practicing Both of the examples above underscore a third important component of communication skills training, namely, the practice. The trainee in the first example was a compassionate man with a degree in social work. I'm sure he'd had ample exposure to good communication skills. It had never gelled for him before. Once we put him in a scenario, coached him through the skills, and alerted him to the fact that he was struggling because he was trying to fix his customer instead of connecting with her (that's the intention we teach), he developed skills rapidly. He even returned to training weeks later to report that he'd created a real difference in his life using the skills at home. He quickly became a valued mentor to others in his work group. Communication skills are deceptively challenging. It takes no great intellect or dexterity to utter the words. What is terribly demanding is all the processing: keeping your focus on the other person despite your own discomfort, listening for the needs beneath complaints and accusations, drumming up the nerve to suggest to an outraged man that he might value some support. What gets you through tough interactions is your confidence in your own intention and skills. And you learn confidence through practice. In my experience, those are the keys to effective communication skills: 1. holding a useful intention like understanding the other person or connecting with them, 2. employing skills that communicate your intention, and 3. practicing the skills and intentions so you have them at hand, even when interactions get intense, especially when they do. Find training that will provide you all three, and you'll have communication skills that will please your customers and increase your income. Tim Dawes is the founder of Interplay, Inc., a firm that helps healthcare organizations to exceed their strategic goals by demonstrating unexpected empathy to patients. Learn about a step-by-step process that helps your staff make their natural compassion more deliberate and consistent for patients, and sign up for monthly "how to" articles at http://www.interplaygroup.com/pages/free_resources.html
MORE RESOURCES: NTTA customer service, Tarrant County district clerk spar over mistaken charge The Dallas Morning News No, GPT-4o isn't going to kill teaching or customer service Business Insider Frost & Sullivan and SOCAP Forge Strategic Partnership to Elevate Customer Care and Experience Yahoo Finance How did customer service get so bad? Financial Times Senate passes bill improving air safety and service for travelers, a day before FAA law expires The Associated Press Verizon sharpens GenAI tools to impro... Mobile World Live Cognigy Named a Leader in 2024 “Conversational AI For Customer Service” Report The Bakersfield Californian What Consumers are Saying About AI and Customer Service Customer Think CommBox Launches Connect Partner Programme, Offering Market-Leading Automation and AI Capabilities to ... Business Wire Opinion: If it's not dead already, customer service is certainly on life support • Asheville Watchdog Asheville Watchdog Frequently asked questions and customer service CSPI Newsroom Poll workers emphasize election confidence, customer service • Indiana Capital Chronicle Indiana Capital Chronicle Top Banks Offering 24/7 Customer Service in 2024 Business Insider Customer Service & Support Hillsborough County (.gov) For 13th Consecutive Year, Wolters Kluwer Customer Service Wins NorthFace ScoreBoard Awards Silicon Canals Senate Passes FAA Bill on Air Safety and Customer Service – The Presidential Prayer Team The Presidential Prayer Team They've got your back: Meet American's system customer service managers - American Airlines Newsroom They've got your back: Meet American's system customer service managers American Airlines Newsroom The Marriott Maze: Navigating Customer Service Over $11, When Does It Stop Being Worth It? View from the Wing Rebuilding the IRS Improves Customer Service and Reduces the Tax Gap Center For American Progress AI enhances flexibility and efficiency for customer service centers, new research reveals | Binghamton News Binghamton University Porsche claims first place for customer service among premium car owners in J.D. Power Study Porsche Newsroom Customer Service Rep Confronts Customer Committing Fraud With The Consequences Of Her Actions. – 'It's okay to do ... Twisted Sifter How to contact Amazon UK Customer Service About Amazon.co.uk Customer Service Administrator | Professional Security JTC Associates Ltd The correct airline customer service numbers to help avoid scams The Washington Post Lee Michaels’ Scott Berg: How to make unhappy customers happy Greater Baton Rouge Business Report Welcome to Riverside Public Utilities City of Riverside (.gov) Forbes Recognizes Regions Bank for Best Customer Service Regions Financial Corporation Customer Assistance Programs DC Water Genesys & ServiceNow join forces to revolutionise customer service ChannelLife Australia Contact SEA Customer Care portseattle.org Senate passes bill improving air safety and service for travelers, a day before FAA law expires Chicago Tribune Customer Support GE Aerospace Claro Colombia Selects TCS and VIAVI Partnership to Improve Customer Service Using AI-Based Technology PR Newswire Buccaneers Continue to Excel in Season Pass Member Customer Service Experience, Voted No. 1 for Sixth ... Buccaneers.com Recent Developments That Could Impact How Companies Offer AI-Based Customer Service Chatbots | Insights Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP At some point, construction gave up on customer service – but it's far from a lost cause New Civil Engineer Billing and Insurance WellSpan Health Britons Spend 800 Years Waiting to Speak to HMRC Business MattersBusiness Matters Startek® wins Bronze Stevie® Award for Innovations in Customer Service Technology USA - English PR Newswire Air India rolls out iPad app for on board customer service Live From A Lounge Verizon Down? Users Report Service Outage, Call Dropping | Ways To Troubleshoot And Customer Support Times Now AI is replacing customer service jobs across the globe The Washington Post Customer Service Center - Recreation & Wellbeing University of California, Berkeley |
RELATED ARTICLES
My Child Has Opie Eye! 7:00 a.m. Committed To Your Customer? Prove It When They Complain! Businesses like to brag in their advertising about quality of work, commitment to their customers, and excellent service. These statements are also proudly advanced in Mission, Vision, and Values Statements. Loyal Customers Take Commitment In today's competitive world of retail, many stores are implementing external marketing programs designed to attract new business.Unfortunately, the cost can be very high with little return on investment. Make Sure You Get The Customer Perspective Businesses that fail, often forget to seek out the customer perspective. I have talked to some folks at businesses that were less than succesful, and when asked if they actively seek out customer comments, the answer invariably is no. 4 Tips Toward Overcoming Bad Customer Service Customer service is the pits, you say. You are not alone. Over Deliver - The Key to Customer Satisfaction Client satisfaction starts with meeting or beating the contractual obligations of the relationship. There are also some intangibles that can help you to over deliver to a client. Listen to Suggestions If you are up to your ears in a stressful situation, it becomes difficult to think clearly. Sometimes, it is best to walk away from a problem, and think about it, rather than try to solve it with an instant solution. Automating Your Customer Support My regular readers will know that one of the things I highly recommend doing with any online business is automating as many of your day to day tasks as possible.From a personal point of view, one of the tasks that takes up a lot of my time is answering emails. Automating Your Help Desk Workflow Do you know you can open, answer, close and report help desk information without human intervention?Automation is a powerful feature provided by most enterprise level help desk products; however, most organizations rarely take advantage of these features. Based on a survey conducted by RightStar Systems, only 5% of the help desk managers interviewed were using automation to its fullest capacity. The Logic of Emotion! Homebuyers are an interesting study. Watching people make their home buying decisions has brought me to the conclusion that every decision that every one of us makes is based in emotion. A New Way To Handle Complaints, Or Is It? What a lot of money we have been wasting on dealing with customer complaints.Instead of dealing with them and attempting to satisfy the customer we should create a process that makes complaining so difficult then when customers complain they get such a huge negative experience and never receive any satisfaction. Is Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System Doomed To Fail? "Right, People. Let's blast out that mail campaign we've been planning for so long. Why Cant Microsoft Make Soft Packaging? Why is it that Microsoft wants you to buy its product but does not want you to open the plastic case that is welded around the cardboard box? I believe that such packaging along with cockroaches will survive atomic disasters!Good luck finding any clue as to an easy way to open this fused bit of skin-tearing packaging. I split my scissors trying to pry open the ends. What Every Manager Should Know About How to Prevent Customer Service Conflicts There are five techniques that have been proven to be effective in resolving, minimizing, and preventing conflicts. And by conflicts I am referring to any of the following that may take place between two or more people: misunderstanding, miscommunications, arguments, disagreements, mixed messages, fighting, etc. Customers - Hold Onto the Ones Youve Got You probably spend a great deal of your time looking for newcustomers or clients. However, are you sure your doingenough to hold onto the ones you've got. The Reality of Customer Service in America and Best Efforts in Franchising, We Can Do Better Yesterday I went to buy a sandwich at a franchised outlet. I thought while driving up would the owner be there to help out and save some money on labor, knowing a holiday weekend is hard to get labor. Under Promise & Over Perform: The Art of Managing Customer Expectations I'll always feel warmly about Conrad's restaurant, in Glendale, California.On the morning of the Northridge earthquake, Conrad's was the only restaurant in town that opened for business, and stayed open until the last customer went home. The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1990's with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer bases. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons. Empowering Customer Service Vital It never fails to amaze me how many companies have employees who are empowered to offer former customers wonderful incentives to lure them back, yet their customer service representatives have the ability to offer virtually nothing to convince an unhappy customer to stay.Powerless, these CSRs often actually ignore customers' requests and declarations of their intent to leave, even encouraging them to seek out another company!They often repeat the few phrases they're allowed to say over and over again, further infuriating the customers. Turning Customer Mistakes Into Raving Fans When you make a mistake with a customer, should you write them off as lost -- never to return again?Nope. There have been numerous studies which show that a customer who has had a problem and gotten it resolved in a timely manner and to their satisfaction is a more loyal customer than one who has never had a problem. |
home | site map |
© 2006 |