Customer Service Training in Communication
Technology has surpassed our wildest dreams of convenience and created new markets and consumer needs unfathomable in the past. Mastering the fundamentals, however, is essential for businesses to successfully harness innovation.
And by fundamentals, I mean in communicating with people, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, mano-e-mano.
Positive customer experiences involve physical, tangible aspects such as price, product, and so on. Juxtaposed to these easily molded and measurable facets of the customer experience is the emotional side.
In The Leadership Solution, written by Jim Shaffer, the emphasis on the emotional side of business comes from the basic need of human beings to feel a sense of belonging. “People aren’t genetically different from the way they were 10 years ago, before the web pervaded our organizations as it has,” said Schaffer. “As social animals, we need a sense of belonging and a sense of emotional intimacy.”
No matter how technologically savvy and advanced a particular business or brand may be, the personal element is still at the core of what builds successful consumer relationships.
Top tips for face-to-face communication with customers:
· Personal communication must start at the top. Managers must interact in person with their employees. Setting the tone and demonstrating effective practices will result in employees emulating that behavior with customers.
· Dealing with customers is relationship based, so behaviors that apply in social contexts do in business in situations as well.
· Remain silent while they talk. This communicates that you’re actively listening, while nodding and showing them you’re engaged. Don’t remain silent much long after they’ve finished however, you want to prove you’re responsive and competent.
· Body language- eye contact, have it, but don’t stare; stand within a personable distance, about an arm’s length, but don’t cross into any boundary of personal space; keep your arms uncrossed and your body at an open angle to them, this conveys that you are receptive to what they’re saying and positive about the interaction.
Tags: Customer Service training in face to face customer service; in person customer service; training for in person sales, verbal and non-verbal communication, training for customer service situations.
Additional Business Training.com Resources
Tags: Customer Service training in face to face customer service; in person customer service; training for in person sales, training for customer service situations, verbal and non-verbal communication
