Customer Service Rule #1: Listen LOUDLY

Listen LOUDLY to customers!

We are excited about our “lunch and learnshop” — Customer Service: 10 “Now” Strategies to “Wow” Customers — scheduled for Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 at 11:30am in Spirit Lake. In fact, we wanted to share the most critical “now” strategy that we’ll be discussing during the learnshop: listen LOUDLY!

While I was an undergraduate student at Florida State University in Tallahassee, I volunteered with the local suicide hotline program. Back then, it was known as Telephone Counseling and Referral Service, or simply TCRS; today, it’s known as 2-1-1 BigBend. The program requires rigorous training, most of which focuses on cultivating active listening skills. Indeed, my colleagues and I spent several weeks learning how to actively listen– as opposed to merely listen — to others.

Several years later, while proudly hanging my TCRS service plaque in my office at a small law office, the firm’s bookkeeper asked, “What’s that for?” I explained that I spent several years volunteering as a crisis counselor on a suicide hotline. “Really?” she said. And then she asked me a question that, just a moment later, resulted in an epiphany: “How many people did you talk out of suicide?”

At first, I performed a quick mental calculation. Let’s see…if, on average, I talked with at least one suicidal caller every four hours, and if I volunteered for at least 1,000 hours, that would be…WAIT! And that’s when the epiphany struck. I knew the answer, which didn’t require any calculation at all.

“Zero,” I responded.

The bookkeeper looked at me in horror. “Don’t worry,” I replied, “no one actually killed themselves during any of my calls.” But she wasn’t satisfied. “You see,” I explained, “it wasn’t what we said or even how we said something to suicidal callers. Instead, it was how we listened.” And I emphasized the word “listened.”

“Oh,” she said.

“So when you asked how many people I talked out of suicide, the truthful response is zero. I didn’t talk anyone out of suicide. The callers talked themselves out of suicide, but I was there to listen — for as long as necessary.”

Since then, I’ve advocated that we actively listen — that is, listen LOUDLY — to customers. When customers pose questions or voice complaints, it’s imperative that we take the time to listen LOUDLY. As we’ll discuss during the learnshop, listening LOUDLY requires three components:

• exclusive focus on the customer;

• non-judgmental empathy; and

• verbal nods and paraphrasing, without interrupting.

In fact, listening LOUDLY is so important — it’s so critical — that the remaining “now” customer service strategies lose their potency if we neglect to listen LOUDLY. If you have a moment, listen LOUDLY to business guru Tom Peters explain the concept of “strategic” listening. It’s well worth your time — and success!

Mark