Remember the childhood game of whispering a phrase to someone and asking them to pass it on? By the time it reached the fourth or fifth person, the meaning of the original phrase was lost! Then, it amused us; in customer care, it can be costly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Teaching good listening skills will help managers, customers, internal customers and the employees themselves. This is the key to providing a premier customer experience at every person-to-person touch point.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Are you a good listener? Most people would answer \u201cyes\u201d to this question. In reality, though, there is usually much more to it. For most of us, mastering the skill of listening means removing some roadblocks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The first and perhaps most daunting roadblock is a belief that you already know or understand the situation. In customer care, the same issues are often heard repeatedly. Before the customer is through their first sentence, customer-care providers have jumped to conclusions about the issue and the fix.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Another roadblock is a defensive stance. Customer-care providers want to argue and defend rather than empathetically listen to the customer. Another manifestation of defensiveness is being competitive and only listening until a break, when providers can jump in and satisfy their own egos by showing how smart they are.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n