Use the 5 phases of listening to make your customers happy
Monday, 2 November 2009
Your customers are your lifeblood. A happy customer is a repeat customer. Are you taking the time to listen to what they say? Barriers to listening can be a lack of focus or as I like to call multitasking.
I am also sometimes guilty of reading emails while listening to phone messages or worse yet, during a phone conversation. This almost always results in a long pause in the conversation and then me apologizing for not listening and that is insulting.
Actual verbal communication is becoming so rare lately that I am going to make a vow to drop everything I am doing to listen and not just hear what my customers are saying. You should schedule a more appropriate time to meet if I don’t have time to properly execute the five phases of listening.
1. Receiving
2. Understanding
3. Remembering
4. Evaluating
5. Responding
Finally sometimes I am guilty of premature judgment. I believe that I know what someone is going to say after the first few words and stop listening and try to prepare an appropriate answer. This is a habit that is difficult to break.
Communication breaks down when you don’t even take the time to listen to what others are saying. If I take the time to actually listen and summarize the information when responding everyone in the discussion will be able to see that I: understand the message, am keeping an open mind and that my questions reflect my understanding of the speaker’s meaning.
If you are looking for a marketing company that will listen and not just hear you … contact us.
April 3rd, 2010 at 9:23 pm
You’ve touched on something here. The premature judgment you cited as an example? That’s due to the lack of employing a skill I’ve heard referred to as “Active Listening.” It’s sadly lacking when holding conversations in our culture of multitasking, which you neatly outlined.
One tip folks might want to try—and this works great if one is really listening—is to “mirror” what you’ve heard once your counterpart has gotten their major points across. At this time say, “So what I’m hearing is…” (Sum up, high-level, what you think that person is trying to communicate). It does two things; 1.) It tells you immediately if your on the right track, or not, as far as recall goes—because your conversation partner will agree, or correct you if your not getting it, or at least clarify any holes. And 2.) It acknowledges the person you’re talking with, letting them know you are completely engaged and value to what they are trying to impart.
Again, I like it because it helps with memory and recall, and tells the person I’m with that I “get them.” If the conversation’s in-person, there’s non-verbal communication that goes along with and supports all of this…but that sir, is the subject for another bog.
Nice article, thanks for posting.