Xigaware

Poor customer service can result in lower sales, a bad reputation within the particular business sector and can therefore lead to a hit on profits. In the most damaging of situations it can even bring a company down to where they can no longer exist in business. Excellent customer service is without doubt an extremely important part of any company as is the effective role of communication within it.

I am involved with customer service on a daily basis as I offer a freelance website design service and a stuttering therapy course. I also work with a company that offers people the opportunity of obtaining cheap calls.

So what would be classed as excellent customer service? What would be classed as very good customer service communication skills? The top executives and management hierarchy of each organisation are need of learning the answers to these questions. I will give my opinions in the following paragraphs.

A typical example and a very common mistake:

Just think for a moment and ask yourself the following question, if you don’t mind! How many times have you been promised by a customer services adviser that they will call you back before the end of the day, only to be let down? I am fairly sure that the majority of people will have experienced this annoyance. You end up having to chase up the company by telephoning them back. There is always an excuse of course – I was going to phone you back however I was just waiting for a colleague to get back to me. Sorry but that just is not good enough, the customer services worker could and should have phoned me on that day, the day they had said that they would, to inform me that they were still awaiting for information from their colleague. If they had done this I would have classed them as having excellent communication skills.

I, being the type of person that I am, will then relay how badly I have been treated at the hands of this company to my family and friends. They then in turn are likely to continue to spread the word as to how poor this business is in the ever essential role of communication. It is fairly obvious that productivity could well be effected if the communication skills are not up to scratch.

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Business communication skills are essential for many reasons.

Your organisations planning and monitoring of business processes require you to convey the information needed to get the task completed . This can be done in many ways and may include email fax or good old fashioned snail mail .

What is crucial is that your message is understood by the recipient . Language is based on encoding your requirements in a manner that the recipient can understand it and still know the exact meaning of what you said.

The English language is full of ambivalent words that can have numerous interpretations depending on the circumstances they are used in. It’s a bit like the kids game you may have played at parties when you were young of Chinese whispers. A classic example is “Send reinforcements we’re going to advance” which is eventually transformed into “Send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance”.

Children love this sort of game in business there’s more at stake .

So… How do you. know that your message has been understood in the way that you wanted it to be?

It’s quite simple …
Just ask !

By confirming that your message has actually been decoded in the way that you meant it to be simply ask the receiver of your message do they understand your meaning and the reason for sending it .

You can also empower your colleagues or other business associates to reflectively listen to what you have communicated .

For example: You have just sent out an email to all of your team telling them that sales are down and if the sales revenues don’t improve then your financial targets will be less than you need to stay in business .

Reflective communication is where the recipient of your message will say to you something like .

” So, Mary , what you are telling theteam is that we have to increase our sales this quarter or we will be deep in trouble”

Your options are then to either clarify the message , If it hasn’t been received correctly or you can confirm that your message has been understood . The benefit of active listening is that all parties are clear right from the start and this will reduce lost time, later when you have to clean up any mess created by bad communication .

This is just one of many examples where you can improve yourbusiness communication.

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There are different schools of thought about what you should get from a communication skills training course Some of you believe that communication skills are only about talking more effectively in almost every situation I say almost every situation because there are some encounters that you have in life where the smart thing to do is to run. Even the martial arts schools teach that…”

Fortunately for most of the challenges that you meet in your life there is no need to run for your life

What is it that you should learn on a communications skills training

It is important that you consider what it is that you want to communicate, before you do anything else What is The result or outcome from this this conversation ? Once you have established this you will know the reason for making the effort to communicate

What is the best “state” that you can be in to approach the other person.The word “state” has some very specific meanings which I will outline for you below

State simply refers to your physical, mental and emotional condition. Some states are more appropriate to certain situations than others Being relaxed and prepared to listen about how you can work together to solve your issues would be a useful state.

You would also want to buildempathy and establish mutual goals with those you wish to relate to. You could do this by using an agreement frame. ie: if Xhappens then does that means that Ywill happen.
You would build the respect and common aims by using rapport skills such as matching and mirroring and this may also include kinaesthetic , listening and watching the other person as a way to build rapport .

Rapportis the fastest way to achieve trust and understanding with those you are communicatingwith.

Being relaxed and confident is important as that will affect how you are perceived. This can be done by using an NLP technique known as anchoring, which is a variation on what pavlov did with his dogs ( Minus the bell though I guess you could use a bell too if you really wanted to. )

The next thing a good communication skills course will teach is which person really has the problem That is to say.. “Which one of us is unhappy with this situation?”

It is so important to work out who is unhappy. It is because this knowledge will determine what strategy you will use tofind common ground

There are severalof these strategies.

They include assertive non agressive messages and active listening These are the skills that you will use when YOU are the one who is unhappy

When the other person owns the problem then you would use understanding and trust building skills and also use a problem solving strategy. Reflective listening is extremely good for this. And when it is applied properly the other person solves their own problemwhich is really cool as that means you don’t have to do it for them.

When you both are unhappy then you will need completely different communication skills. These include
win win conflict resolution; and ways to influence their values through modeling; and consulting.

lets look at these one at a time.

Influencing valuesis where you will seek out common values that are important to both of you so that you then have some common ground to start. reaching agreementYou may also steer the other person towards being aware of how important your values are to you and also demonstrating that they work for you….

Which brings me to the next skill which is modeling..
Modeling in a communication skills context simply means showing through your actions what’s important to you . You will show what things are important and how they work for you and hopefully the other person will be inspired enough to alter their behavior enough and you can both live with it.

There are two other things that you can do when you’re in dispute with someone else’s behavior..

The first of these is consulting which basically means 1/ being a knowledgeable expert and 2/getting hired. This is way too complex to go into here as this is the subject of the transforming communication training seminar. If you get these two things right you stand a chance of being a consultant….

The final thing you can do when all else fails is to change the relationship.

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