Ch 5 Customer Service

hearing

A passive physiological means of gathering sound waves and transmitting them to the brain for analysis. It is the first phase of the listening process.

recognition

A process that occurs in thinking when a previously experienced pattern, event, process, image, or object that is stored in memory is encountered again.

In analyzing your customer's message(s), ask yourself the following questions:

Am I practicing active listening skills? What message is the customer trying to get across? What does the customer want or need me to do in response to his or her message? Should I take notes or remember key points being made? Am I forming premature conclusions, or do I need to listen further? Are there personal biases or distractions I need to avoid? Is the customer failing to provide information needed for me to make a sound decision? In addition to words, what other feedback clues are being provided? Are they important to message meaning? What questions do I need to ask as a follow-up to the customer's message?

listening

An active, learned process consisting of four phases: receiving/hearing the message, attending, comprehending/assigning meaning, and responding.

biases

Beliefs or opinions that a person has about an individual or group. Often based on unreasonable distortions or prejudice.

employee assistance program (EAP)

Benefit package offered by many organizations that provides services to help employees deal with personal issues that might adversely affect their work performance (e.g., legal, financial, behavioral, family, and mental health counseling services).

Attentiveness

By focusing your attention on the customer, you can better interpret his or her message and satisfy his or her needs. Attentiveness can be displayed through nonverbal cues (nodding or cocking of the head to one side or the other, smiling, or using paralanguage).

Attentiveness.

By focusing your attention on the customer, you can better interpret his or her message and satisfy his or her needs. Attentiveness can be displayed through nonverbal cues (nodding or cocking of the head to one side or the other, smiling, or using paralanguage). When you are reading, talking on the phone to someone while servicing your customer, or doing some other task while "listening" to your customer, you are not really focusing. In fact, your absorption rate will fall into the 25 percent of listening efficiency category about which you read earlier. The ability to competently multitask or juggle multiple tasks is a myth. Research studies support the fact that the human brain cannot efficiently conduct two activities simultaneously.

Empathy

By putting yourself in the customer's place and trying to relate to the customer's needs, wants, and concerns, you can often reduce the risk of poor service.

Empathy.

By putting yourself in the customer's place and trying to relate to the customer's needs, wants, and concerns, you can often reduce the risk of poor service. Some customer service professionals neglect the customer's need for compassion, especially when the customer is dissatisfied. Such negligence tends to magnify or compound the effect of the initial poor service the customer received.

Patience

Each customer has different needs and expectations based on age, gender, behavioral style, preference, background, cultural background, and other factors. That is why you must never try to use a cookie-cutter approach to delivering service where you assume all people are the same and respond to the same approach in service delivery.

external obstacles

Factors outside an organization or the sphere of one's influence that can cause challenges in delivering service.

Listening Process Steps

Hearing/receiving message -> Attending-> Comprehending/assigning meaning -> Responding

Objectivity

In dealings with customers, try to avoid subjective opinions or judgments. If you have a preconceived idea about customers, their concerns or questions, the environment, or anything related to the customers, you could mishandle the situation.

Objectivity.

In dealings with customers, try to avoid subjective opinions or judgments. If you have a preconceived idea about customers, their concerns or questions, the environment, or anything related to the customers, you could mishandle the situation. Listen openly and avoid making assumptions. Allow customers to describe their needs, wants, or concerns in their own words, and then analyze them fairly before taking appropriate action. If necessary or appropriate, have a colleague join in the discussion to get an objective second opinion.

personal obstacles

Individual factors that can limit performance or success in life. Examples are disabilities, lack of education, attitude, and biases.

Patience.

Keep in mind that it is your job to serve the customer. Not everyone communicates in the same manner. Each customer has different needs and expectations based on age, gender, behavioral style, preference, background, cultural background, and other factors. That is why you must never try to use a cookie-cutter approach to delivering service where you assume all people are the same and respond to the same approach in service delivery. Take the time to ask questions and actively listen to their responses before choosing a course of action.Do your best to listen well so that you can get at the customer's meaning or need. Do not rush a customer who seems to be processing information and forming opinions or making a decision. This is especially important after you have presented product information and have asked for a buying decision. Answer questions and provide additional information requested, but do not appear impatient. Doing so could frustrate, anger, and ultimately alienate the customer. You could end up with a complaint or lost customer. Patience is especially important when a language barrier or speech disability is part of a customer's situation. Your job is to take extra care to determine customer needs and then respond appropriately. In some cases, you may have to resort to the use of an interpreter or written or other visual communication techniques in order to determine the customer's needs.

objections

Reasons given by customers for not wanting to purchase a product or service during an interaction with a salesperson or service provider (e.g., "I don't need one," "I cannot afford it," or "I already have one").

information overload

Refers to having too many messages coming together and causing confusion, frustration, or an inability to act.

psychological distracters

Refers to mental factors that can cause a shift in focus in interacting with others. Examples are state of health and personal issues.

responding

Refers to sending back verbal and nonverbal messages to a message originator.

The following strategies are typically helpful in sending an "I care" message when done naturally and with sincerity:

SMILE! Do not interrupt to interject your ideas or make comments unless they help to clarify a point made by the customer. Sit or stand up straight and make eye contact with the customer. Lean forward or turn an ear toward the customer, if appropriate and necessary. Paraphrase the customer's statements occasionally. Page 193Nod and offer affirmative statements or utterances (e.g. "I see," "Uh-huh," "Really," "Yes") to show that you are following the conversation. Do not finish a customer's sentence. Let the customer talk.

faulty assumptions

Service provider projections made about underlying customer message meanings based on past experiences.

memory

The ability to gain, store, retain, and recall information in the brain for later application. Short-term memory stores small bits of information (seven items, plus or minus two) for approximately 20 seconds while long-term memory can store much larger quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration.

Understanding

The ability to listen as customers verbalize their needs, and to ensure that you understand them, is essential in properly servicing the customer.

Understanding.

The ability to listen as customers verbalize their needs, and to ensure that you understand them, is essential in properly servicing the customer. Too often, you hear people say, "I understand what you mean," when it is obvious that they have no clue as to the level of emotion being felt. When this happens while a customer is upset or angry, flared tempers, loss of business, bad publicity, and, at the far end of the continuum, acts of violence might result. You will read about some techniques for demonstrating understanding later in this chapter.

listening gap

The difference in the speed at which the brain can comprehend communication and the speed at which the average adult speaks in the United States.

gives you some idea of the potential impact of a 25 percent efficiency rate on an organization.

The implications of such loss include higher customer churn rates, potential negative word-of-mouth publicity, and reduced revenue for your organization

attending

The phase of the listening process in which a listener focuses attention on a specific sound or message being received from a person or the environment.

comprehending or assigning meaning

The phase of the listening process in which the brain attempts to match a received sound or message with other information stored in the brain as a memory in order to recognize or extract meaning from it.

circadian rhythm

The physiological 24-hour cycle associated with the earth's rotation that affects metabolic and sleep patterns in humans as day displaces night.

service recovery

The process of correcting something that has gone wrong involving provision of a product or service to a customer. The concept involves not only replacing defective products, but also going the extra step of providing compensation for the customer's inconvenience.

thought speed

The rate at which the human brain processes information.

lag time

The term applied to the difference in the rate at which the human brain can receive and process information and at which most adults speak.

The words you select, the way you deliver them, the timing and location, and the nonverbal signals you send

all have meaning, and all affect the way others perceive and interpret your message.

In a classic study on listening conducted by Dr. Ralph G. Nichols, who is sometimes called the Father of the Field of Listening

data revealed that the average white-collar worker in the United States typically has only about a 25 percent efficiency rate when listening. This means that 75 percent of the message is lost. Think about what such a loss Page 175in message reception could mean in an organization if the poor listening skills of customer service professionals led to a loss of 75 percent of customer opportunities.