Customer Service Representative – Active Listening Tips

Before you can effectively listen to your customers or clients as a customer service representative you must first prepare to listen. That is because active listening is a learned skill and is different from the passive action of simply hearing sounds. Not only do you need to take the opportunity to attend training sessions on how to become an active listener, but you must also focus your attention when listening and practice the skill on a regular basis in order to improve.

The following are some simple strategies you can use to increase the chances for a more positive interaction with your customers when talking to them face-to-face or over the telephone.

Eliminate physical barriers to effective communication. This means stop distracting actions. This includes using technology, taking notes (not related to the customer that you are serving), talking to others, or attending to other tasks.

Block mental barriers to communication. Many times you may have things going on in your brain that can cause you to not focus your complete attention on the person in front of you or on the telephone. Examples of this are biases against a person or group, preconceived ideas about what someone is saying or someone who reminds you of similar prior situations or people, anger, irritation, or physical and personal issues that distract from the job at hand. If you cannot appropriately attend to a customer or situation, excuse yourself and ask someone else to step in for you.

Focus on the customer and project a positive service attitude. Do this through your facial (e.g. smiling), non-verbal cues (e.g. posture and gestures) and verbal responses (e.g. tone, inflection, and pitch) while listening attentively to what they are saying.

Summarize your understanding frequently during a conversation. This is paraphrasing and involves repeating the customer’s message back to them in your own words. For example, once a customer has described why he or she came by or called, you might say something like, “So Mister Brown, if I understand you correctly, the issue is … Is that correct?” This approach lets the customer know that you were actually listening and helps ensure that you take the appropriate action or respond correctly. Just be careful to alternate your responses so that you do not use the same approach over several times. That would make you sound like a parrot and could actually irritate the customer.

Ask appropriate questions to clarify and get feedback from the customer. Closed-ended questions are good for affirmations that you understood something correctly or to get agreement or permission, but do little to involve your customer in a conversation. For example, “You would like to exchange this red scarf for one that has red in it but also has some more supple colors as well. Is that correct?” Closed-ended questions typically start with an action verb (e.g. do, did, can, should, or will) and normally lead to a short answer or yes/no response.

To engage your customers in more open dialogue, you might use open-ended questions. For example, “What would the perfect scarf look like to you Ms. Harrison?” This type of question allows the customer to take control of the conversation. It also can provide a subconscious feeling of empowerment, control, and decision-making. Such feelings can lead to less opportunity for dissatisfaction or change of mind later because the customer made the purchase decision and may not feel that you forced something on them that they did not want or like. Open-ended questions normally start with words like what, how, and why.

For more effective customer service tips, strategies and techniques for active listening, verbal and non-verbal communication with customers and other skills to help improve customer relationships, meet customer needs, wants and expectations and create a more customer-centric organization, get copies of How to Be a Great Call Center Representative, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success. The latter book is the top-selling customer service textbook in the U.S.

Customer Service Quote – Edward De Bono

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Quote – Edward De Bono

In the age of global customer service and Internet access and big box stores, many companies and organizations offer the same products as their competitors. The key to who wins in the race to gain new customers and customer retention is which business provides consistently excellent customer service and delivers customer satisfaction by meeting their customers’ needs, wants and expectations.

“A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.” ― Edward De Bono, How To Have A Beautiful Mind

“If you never change your mind, why have one?”― Edward de Bono

“Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.”― Edward De Bono, The Use of Lateral Thinking

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”― Edward De Bono

“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people’s minds.”― Edward De Bono

“A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.”― Edward De Bono, How To Have A Beautiful Mind

“The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.”― Edward De Bono, I Am Right You Are Wrong

“A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”― Edward De Bono

“We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem-solving.”― Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats

“Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.”― Edward De Bono

If you are looking for strategies and techniques that can help set your company apart from your completion, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative.

Deliver Excellent Customer Service By Building Customer Relationships

by Robert W. Lucas

Deliver Excellent Customer Service By Building Customer Relationships

Strong customer service skills are the basis for delivering excellent customer service. In these days where companies are struggling to gain and retain customer and brand loyalty, the defining factor between customer retention and customer desertion is how well service providers do their jobs.

To excel against the competition, everyone in an organization must take responsibility for serving their current and potential customers to the best of their abilities. This means that they must educate themselves on the companies products and services, continue to gain and update their customer service skills and commit to owning any situation in which they find themselves with a customer.

If you want to learn more about building customer relationships and specific customer service skills, get copies of my books Customer Service Skills for Success, How to Be a Great Call Center Representative and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.