A walkthrough on how to interact with people, better
Having a fantastic product in a consumer-based market is awesome, but if you don’t know how to flaunt it through customer service, you’ll be losing out on a lot of potential customers.
The key to making a business thrive in the long term, as well as the short, is to have a robust customer service body in place that caters to a wide variety of complaints, concerns, queries, and requests through the power of active listening, to name a few.
But how exactly do you provide customer service that goes above and beyond to deliver exceptional work every time? And how do you know when a customer is satisfied with said service? Let’s run you through our 7 tips that shed light on the process and how to get there effectively.
What is Active Listening?
It is one thing to passively listen to someone talk and another thing entirely to concentrate on what they’re saying while actively engaging verbally and non-verbally through your senses. For this reason, active listening demands time and patience to master.
Let’s break down the key elements of active listening for you:
Attentive Focus
Directing your mind from wayward thoughts and disciplining it to focus entirely on what the speaker is saying is a challenging feat but one that is attainable. An attentive focus helps you better retain and single out crucial bits of information when talking to customers. In turn, this will also enable you to hold productive conversations with the customer once they have stopped talking.
Open Mindedness
It is imperative to be willing to understand where the other person may be coming from. Their beliefs, plans, or goals may not align with yours, but that doesn’t mean you start a whole debate on it. Learn to practice open-mindedness and roll with your customer to help provide a swift resolution.
Empathy
Positive affirmation is a big need in fields like customer service. Being receptive to a customer’s feelings toward a particular product or problem helps calm them down. Even if the problem is out of your control, simply indicating that you understand their feelings and that you are on their side acts as a soothing effect for the person on the other end.
Nonverbal Cues
These apply mostly to in-person customer service. Body language relays your attitude toward the customer. Standing/sitting with a confident posture, having a warm smile, and open gestures are just some of the ways that help nudge the customer to be more open with you. The use of paralanguage in the form of a simple “hmm” or “uh huh” is also highly recommended.
7 Best Tips for Active Listening in Customer Service
Now that we’ve brought to light what the term actually means, let’s go ahead and showcase the 7 tips that showcase the power of active listening!
1. Silence your internal monologue: We’re creative beings. There are bound to be voices in our heads: the good, bad, and ugly. Mastering control over these inner voices can have lasting results, such as better concentration and productivity.
Tip: Try practicing meditation in your off time to get a better hold over your inner voice.
2. Make eye contact and maintain open body language: Showing a genuine interest in the concerns of your customers helps assure them that you’re there to help. Body language, such as maintaining eye contact, not crossing your arms, and even shaking hands before talking can help portray an aura of friendliness.
3. Avoid interrupting: Unless it’s a form of paralanguage, blatant interruptions that may throw your customers off track when they’re talking should be avoided. Remember, you’re there to listen to them. Not the other way around.
4. Ask questions for clarity: Once your customer is done talking, seek clarity on the matter by asking questions. This has a two-pronged effect. It helps the customer better understand what the underlying issue among several is; it helps you better digest the concern at hand.
5. Paraphrase and summarize: It could very well be possible that you misunderstand your customers’ concerns. Happens to the best of us-nothing to be ashamed of. However, try to minimize the possibility of this by repeating and summarizing what you’ve been told.
6. Acknowledge emotions: Build trust by validating their feelings toward the matter. By enabling them to display genuine emotion, you can then work from the ground up to expedite a lasting resolution.
7. Show appreciation: Customer service etiquettes go a long way. Always make the effort to thank them for their concerns and feedback. This, in turn, lets the customer know that you and your company will be there for them in the future as well.
A Responsible Customer Service is a Punctual One
Multiple Channels of Communication
Different customers prefer different channels of communication. Where one person may prefer picking up the phone and reaching out to a customer service agent, the other may instead opt to reach out via email. That is why there should always be more than one way to snowball customer traffic.
Email Service
Granted, this method is a tad bit old-fashioned, but it is, nevertheless, a sure-shot way to interact with customers. Customers who shy away from more “interactive” ways of reaching out can instead use email to voice anything from complaints to new orders. It’s an essential component of any platform.
Website Chatbot
Having a dedicated chatbot on your website, especially one powered by AI, helps expedite customer concerns with automated messages. All customers have to do is shoot a message to start a conversation. Don’t worry if your chatbot is unable to answer the complex ones. You can always program it to funnel through those to a live agent.
Social Media
A crucial choice in today’s digital age, social media helps regulate information to customers who follow appropriate accounts. With so much happening on a daily basis, it can be hard to keep up with updates. That is why having a robust internet service like that of Charter Spectrum is imperative for keeping abreast of various company-related news circulating on social websites.
Text Messaging
A forever constant for keeping your customers in the loop, text messaging is a cost-efficient way to engage with your customers, letting them know about meetings, delivery updates, and tantalizing offers. You can also embed a dedicated texting support number to allow customers to reach out via text.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, the power of active listening must certainly not be dismissed. It acts as a backbone for any customer service body and opens up fruitful channels for a company to attract and retain its customers. Keep our aforementioned pointers close to you if you’re even remotely related to customer service.
And, if you’re in some sort of managerial position at your company to implement our tips, then all the better! Go ahead and try them out to experience the benefits of A-grade customer service firsthand.