What You Say May Be Held Against You - A New Approach To Business Phone Etiquette

Your telephone customer service experience is critical. In today’s virtual world an incredible amount of business is completed via telephone. If your team members aren’t able to connect with customers effectively the telephone experience they create may literally drive customers away.

Effective business phone etiquette begins with understanding and communicating with your customers the way they want to be communicated with.

Perhaps you remember the “Golden Rule” – treat others the way you would like to be treated. The harsh reality is that not everyone wants to be treated the way you do. In fact odds are only around 25 percent that by treating someone the way you would like to be treated, you are in fact helping that person feel positive about their experience with you. That leaves a strong possibility that you are inadvertently harming your customer relationships via your phone etiquette skills.

Trade your “Gold” phone etiquette for “Platinum”. The “Platinum Rule” is to treat customers the way they would like to be treated.

Sounds complicated, right? After all… How can one possibly know how to treat someone they really don’t know?

Actually it’s not complicated at all. All you need to do is watch for the “signals” that people emit which show how they want to be treated.

Through a simple approach we call “matching and mirroring” – you can communicate in a manner that your customer will identify with and enjoy. When you connect with your customer in a way that they really appreciate, your likeability improves and with it the potential they will want to repeat the experience soon.

Step One – Notice what your customer talks about. Do they talk about tasks or people?

An example… If you were to ask someone on a Monday morning, “What did you do this weekend?” and they answered with “I mowed the lawn,” you may potentially assume they are “task-oriented” at that particular time. If your customer talks about tasks, you will want to do the same.

If a customer is focused on a particular problem, you will want to match and mirror their concern for the problem. If you were to talk about people instead, they may feel that you don’t care about their problems and your “likeability” may suffer.

Another example… If you were to ask your customer how their weekend was and they answered with a five minute sharing of all the things they did with their family – you will want to ask them to share details. In other words – you will want to help them focus on “people”.

In fact you might ask them a question about the people in their life. If you focus on the task or try to rush them to resolving their problem while they focus on people, they may sense that you don’t care about them and your likeability will diminish.

Are you interested in helping your team better connect with your customers? You might consider an onsite learning program that we call Dynamic Communication. It’s a powerful business phone etiquette learning program that will help your telephone customer service representatives better understand themselves as well as the customers they interact with.

Interested in learning more? Give us a call or fill out our online form to request more information today!

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