As HR Directors it is important to train your staff. In view of this we asked Peter Nixon, Negotiation and Dialogue Consultant, Potential Dialogue to shed some insight on important points to look out for when training staff.
The dialogue and service of your customer facing staff will make or break your success in the current recession. Nixon believes the real challenge is not negotiation give and take but rather conducting difficult dialogues with customers when they’re upset. The recession has increased customer dissatisfaction and customer facing staff are frequently talking to angry and hostile clients. Currently dialogue skills are needed more than ever and customer service professionals and hitherto happy customers are in conflict over issues that are largely out of their control. Nixon asserts that: “The solution is in the dialogue.”
He differentiates communication and dialogue, explaining the five elements of successful dialogue and giving some practical tips to improve dialogue with customers so that employees are able to:
a) Keep the customer
b) Spot trouble before it is too late
c) Pick up opportunities when they arise
Communication vs. Dialogue
In the last twenty years we have become expert communicators. Communication is defined as exchanging information, using email, text, PowerPoint, mobile phones etc. Concurrently we have become so busy handling an avalanche of communication that we have spent less and less time in simple conversation at work—colleagues, customers and suppliers and at home—family and friends. Normal conversation can lead to dialogue, which Nixon defines as thinking together, involving wisdom and ideas which arise only as a result of your dialogue with others.
Advantages of dialogues
Complaints are constructive. The perspective of others is important to knowing how your team is doing and how your service can be improved. Customer facing professionals get it all—from thanks and suggestions to criticisms and threats. This should be considered information out of which services and products can emerge or be discontinued and organisations can be restructured.
Risks of not engaging in dialogue with customers
There are downfalls to not extending communication with customers into the domain of dialogue where information resides. These risks fall into three categories:
- Risk of losing the customer—in this recessionary environment everyone is scrambling to win business. If your employees are not talking to key customers they will feel ignored and resentful and will almost certainly be entertained by competitors.
- Risk of not spotting trouble before it is too late—staying close to customers is critical because situations change constantly. The risk that something is missed that can damage your organisation is significant. Customer facing personnel should be trained to handle whatever comes up and they should know how to escalate non standard issues to superiors who can assess the risk and respond accordingly. Service failures seldom arise out of nowhere; conditions for failure are normally present and known and need only be surfaced through dialogue so that you can deal with them accordingly.
- Risk of missing new opportunities as they arise—the biggest gem. If customers are smart enough to tell you what they want then customer facing personnel need only listen. Normally customers don’t know what they want before they see it so service professionals need to listening intently to understand reasons for customers comments, complaints and suggestions. A simple reply “oh why do you say that” can open the door to dialogue and begin to de-escalate the customer at the same time.
The Five Elements of Successful Dialogue
Nixon states that good customer facing and service professionals are often not fully aware of what they do that makes them so effective. Years of observation and research has identified five key elements of expertise that seem to make a difference when conducting effective dialogues:
1. Engaging customers verbally—either face to face or over the telephone, or in writing, email or letters so that a dialogue can begin. There are many reasons people don’t want to voice things to customers, for example: I don’t want to hear the customer’s complaint. I only have bad news to tell the customer. I am scared or apprehensive of the customer. Customer relationship managers should be meeting customers to give updates and ask questions about the customer’s situation.
2. Listening—good dialogue requires good listening, or reading. Listening is not just hearing but listening and asking questions to gain a deeper understanding. Nixon said “the risks of not listening to your customers far outweigh any excuse that you might find so if you personally find it difficult to listen to your customers I suggest you delegate the listening role temporarily to one of your colleagues or outsource it.”
3. Suspend your own thoughts and feelings when in dialogue with others so that you do not interrupt open exchange. One example is during recession many customer-facing personnel may assume a customer is digging for some advantage. To overcome this Nixon recommends you find a non-service topic to discuss with them, e.g. a sporting event, and then use the opportunity to ask some smart questions that lead into dialogue. Assumptions can be fatal; it’s crucial to listen to the client. Until you understand their perspective you won’t know how to respond appropriately.
4. Respect—understanding underlying differences that exist between people.
5. Presence—the last of the five attributes and for Nixon, the single most important one because “without presence the parties involved in the dialogue cannot really voice, listen, suspend and respect convincingly.” Presence is rare because everyone is multi-tasking, over worked, under slept and generally pulled in all directions at once. To improve presence the single most important thing you can do is slow down and focus 100% on the person with whom you are in dialogue.
Tactics to avoid losing your customers to aggressive competitors and spot problems before it is too late
The more important the customer the more often one should be in dialogue with them. Nixon recommends setting up a regular time and place to carry out these dialogues. For many this will be a weekly telephone call or coffee meeting. Nixon advised in a rapidly changing market dialogue is essential.
Engage customers in dialogue to ascertain what is happening or might be happening, which is not being discussed. Call upon your ability to engage customers in what is potentially a difficult dialogue in today’s markets.
Bring compassion to the dialogue. Meditate on what it is like to be in their shoes and what might be causing their upset. Ensure your choice of words and tone of voice, i.e. dialect; reinforce the message that you care.
Bring experience to the dialogue. It is unlikely that customers will lie, but they may be judicious with the truth preferring to tell you only that that reinforces their argument. Their lack of full disclosure may be intentional but might also result from them being overly upset from something else. Use your experience and intuition, ask questions and assess the situation on the spot.
Tactics to uncover opportunities with your key customers
1. The Chinese character for crisis includes both danger and opportunity. Some key customers may be struggling and are awaiting an opportunity to ask for your help. Nixon advises asking key customers to outline how economic challenges are affecting them and how you or your organisation can help.
2. Customers may not see opportunities for improved service so Nixon suggests engaging key customers in an exercise called Challenge Mapping—mapping the reasons a customer wants to succeed and things that are stopping them from doing so. Start with: How might you win from the situation? Secondly why they want to win from the situation, “[It] seems obvious but you’ll be surprised by what some of your customer tell you,” said Nixon. Finally ask customers to identify all the things that are stopping them from economic or other challenges. Their answers will highlight the risks referred to above and the opportunities for you to help.
3. Finally if you want to uncover opportunities in your key customers Nixon has two questions: What is your biggest challenge at the moment? Give customers time to consider their answer and keep asking them to explain further. This exercise will be enlightening in itself, but if you sense your customer is willing to continue the dialogue you can also ask them, “If there was one more thing we could do for you what would that be?”. If you are lucky enough to get an answer then your job is to follow-up.
The solution is in the dialogue
It is necessary to recognise the difference between communication and dialogue. Overcome the excuses that prevent you and your team from effectively deploying the five key elements of successful dialogue. Engage employees by voicing key information or asking relevant questions. Listen deeply to what they tell you and think about why you they are telling you. Suspend any assumptions that might be preventing you from really understanding the situation and respect customers even if they are responsible for their own problems. Finally practice mindfulness to become 100% present in all key customer dialogues. It is dialogue that differentiates us from every other living creature so don’t forget to use it.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
