Anyone that has done a training course about customer care or communication will have been taught a range of skills to help them communicate with other people. There are techniques you can use to for stay positive and engaged, but training courses invariably teach these skills as routes to success while rarely addressing the destination.

Effective communication in a customer service role is measured by the customer getting the service they want or the answer to their question, right?

That’s certainly a part of it, but all that’s really doing is demonstrating that we are effective at putting our message across. It doesn’t consider whether the customer has been effective at receiving that message.

We know that communication is about sharing a concept, idea or message such that it goes from one place (usually someone’s head) to another place (someone else’s head). As long as the idea gets there, we’ve succeeded in communicating.

That doesn’t mean our communication was effective though. The first customer care training course attended introduced me to the concepts below, and I’ve been surprised to discover no course I’ve been on has explored them again since.

Tier 1: Convey a message

Let’s say you need to tell a customer that the person they need to speak to isn’t working today. You might say this:

I’m afraid that our specialist isn’t available today.

As long as we get our message across, using all the basic techniques you can get from any communication skills course, we succeed in communicating. In a lot of situations, especially with particularly simple queries, this might seem like that’s all you need to do.

However, in our example we’re trying to do more than just give a message. The customer obviously needs to speak to a specialist, but today that can’t happen. We might know that the specalist never works on Fridays, and the customer might intend to try again next Friday…

Tier 2: Improve understanding

The customer needs some context. Here we aim to give a little more information so that the customer can grasp the reason behind the answer we’ve given.

Our specialist doesn’t work on Fridays.

Most of us would probably feel this was relevant enough that we would have said it without thinking.

However, when issues become more complex or customer service agent is particularly under pressure, this can be skipped in favour of just turning around the calls as quickly as possible. Perhaps there are a lot of calls coming in today, the team is short staffed and/or there are targets you’re expected to hit. You might feel that you just don’t have time to give a more in depth answer to every customer.

On rare occasions you might be right, but in general this leaves the customer feeling like they weren’t given a useful response (a bad review is just round the corner) or they’ll just call back later (and overall take more of our and their time to get their answer).

It’s almost always better to at least give the customer some contextual information to help them understand the answer.

Tier 3: Gain belief

It’s no good telling a customer something if they don’t believe you. Have you every finished speaking to a customer service agent and felt like they fobbed you off, didn’t answer what you asked or waffled a lot without saying anything? They probably finished the call thinking they’d been really helpful, but you didn’t believe them.

Our specialist’s shift pattern is Sunday through Thursday. This helps us make sure we can help customers at weekends.

There are a few things you can do to gain belief. There’s never any harm in giving a little more information about the customer’s situation. This shows you are knowledgeable about what they’re asking, and therefore are more likely to be accepted as an authoritative source.

Previously you’ve given the customer an answer and added some context for their understanding, and now you’re supporting this with some details of why it’s the right answer.

This should be the tier that you should aim for with every customer interaction, and yet many fall short of this step.

Tier 4: Provoke action

If our customer has to do something in order to progress their query, then we need them to actually be willing to do it. They might believe us when we say the specialist isn’t working today, but they might still go home and tell their friends that we just weren’t able to help them, shifting our reputation a little towards the negative.

If you come back on Monday, the specalist will be available. We can book you an appointment or you can leave some details and I’ll pass them to the specialist so she can give you a call.

Here we focus on what the customer needs to do in order to move forward. In this case we have some options and so we offer them in the order we’d like the customer to consider them. We know the specialist will be more likely to be able to help in person, but offer to a phone call as an alternative.

If alternatives are available, we should absolutely share them with the customer up front, even if we have a preference. The customer then feels like they have some control over what they do next, and by choosing an action – even if we determined all the options – they are more likely to actually do it.

We also demonstrate that we are happy to contribute to the next steps. If the customer opts for the phone call, we will be the one noting down their details and passing them onto the specialist.

In fact, by showing a willingness to retain ownership, some customers will mirror that willingness by making the effort to take the action that we prefer. Their belief that we have told them the best course of action is re-enforced.

But my colleagues and I already do all of this!

You probably do, usually.

With frequent questions and answers, these four tiers could be baked into human behaviour. If someone asks for your opening hours, and those opening hours are pretty commonplace in your location/culture, then society has already established belief for you and the customer is ready to act on what you say (i.e. to turn up when you’re open).

On the other hand, how often do you have customers come back and ask the same question again and again? How often have you been under pressure and wanted to get through the customers quickly? How often do you finish a call thinking that the customer “just didn’t get it”?

If the customer “didn’t get it”, there’s a reasonable chance that you “didn’t give it”.

If the customer “didn’t get it”, they are probably not a happy customer, not going to be keen on re-engaging with you in the future, and you are at risk of bad reviews or losing that customer.

If you take a little more time to ensure every customer believes what you tell them and acts on your advice, they are much more likely to feel good about the result, leave a good review and come back for more in the future.

If you can achieve that, then your communication is absolutely, without a doubt, effective.

Want to know more? Feel free to get in touch!