Switch Hack

How many times do you find yourself speaking to people and you sense they are doing their emails while you are talking to them?

You know they are not listening properly and are distracted by other things. They are not trying to actively listen and really understand what you are saying.

Next time you think someone is doing this just flippantly add something absurd into the conversation to test whether they are really listening to you or not.

If you didn’t catch this week’s Cutting Edge program on Call Centre misery, check out the Times article here.

Phone Rage made a valiant attempt to show the often neglected side of the call centre story, but largely missed the point.

Indeed, the brutal fact is that call centre agents have to endure frustrated customers – this may never change. The program certainly highlighted our long held opinion that call centres, (increasingly referred to as contact centres as consumer preferences shift from simply voice to a wider range of email, phone and Internet channels as a means of contact) have the power to transform relationships that brands have with their customers.

However, the program missed the opportunity to make an important point, namely that today in customer service it’s all about RESOLUTION - thereby achieving closure for the customer. To do this brands must use their contact centres to help them understand why the customer was calling, and not just adopt language to pacify them…but this is almost like sticking a big plaster over the bigger issue of why was the customer frustrated in the first place!

All the customers featured in the program were united in the fact that they just wanted their issue resolved. Having to repeat themselves, being passed from pillar to post, enduring endless queues, all merely contributed to the core issue – be it a missing phone or an incorrect bill.

Of course it’s important the agents are able to empathise with customers - that’s why our agents undergo listening psychometric to profile their listening style to match them with the brand project they will be most successful on.

But the main learning to be had from the program must be that contact centres are now a fact of life and they have proven themselves profitable, convenient and essential parts of the brand DNA. The onus now is on the organisations themselves to use the contact centre to listen to WHY their customers are calling and evolve their practices where possible to improve customer perceptions – perceptions which typically are formed before the contact centre becomes involved!

The program compounded the fears that all too often contact centres concentrate too much on the traditional measure of how quickly a call is answered, over the more important measures of resolution and customer satisfaction.

For further discussion on this post please visit the Call Centre focus forum.
 

Although it appears to require a lot of hard work the benefits from becoming an active listener can be well worth the effort. However, to make a genuine connection with the people we are interacting with requires being authentic in our desire to understand what is being communicated to us.

In fact the term ‘authentic listener’ is increasingly coming into play to differentiate the people who have mastered the skill of actively listening in ways that enable them to achieve a very high level of understanding.

‘Authentic listeners’ are those people who have developed a keen awareness that comes from learning to appreciate and acknowledge what is being said in spite of whether they agree or disagree with the one talking. The ‘authentic listener’ demonstrates an understanding of what the speaker is saying from the speaker’s perspective without making a judgment on the content until they have the full story. This naturally puts them in a very strong position to influence those they interact with. To try seeing the issue from another person’s point of view opens the way to discussion of the issues that both parties need to resolve.