You depend upon your voice when offering customer service over the phone, but your emotions and body language also affect how you communicate through speech.
To enhance your skills in serving customers, consider taking part in Customer Service Training Course delivered by PD Training in Wellington, Christchurch and other cities in New Zealand.
Ways In Which We Express Ourselves
Even though the other person can only hear you when talking over the phone, your body language, feelings and expressions affect the communication. That is because our various mediums of expression do not work in isolation – they are interconnected.
When we talk to someone face-to-face, we use speech, body language, and facial expressions to express ourselves. That is also exactly how we communicate over the phone. Even when we are aware that the other person can only hear our voice, we use every medium of expression that we otherwise use. That is why even when you are talking to a customer over the phone, your body and emotions respond. When talking over the phone with customers, you must remain aware of the following:
- Your body language
- Level of attentiveness
- Feelings
- Etiquette
A customer may easily notice a lapse in any of the above since they impact the tone of your voice. If you are sitting back in a relaxing posture when talking to a customer over the phone, your tone will be relaxed, the sentences may drag, and your level of attentiveness will be low. Similarly, your voice may reveal stress or irritation if you feel burdened by a call from a customer.
The customer can pick up your feelings, good or bad, only by listening to you talk. Therefore, you must ensure that you are professional in every manner even when you are required to provide customer service only over the phone.
An Exercise To Improve Your Communications Over The Phone
A good way to judge how others pick up cues from just your voice is to listen to your customers attentively. When you think a customer is ill-mannered, think about what makes you think this. Did he/she use bad words? Was the tone of voice rude? Did he/she sound irritated? What made you judge him/her in this way?
A simple evaluation of a sentence or two will help you to see how thoughts and feelings get expressed through speech without your knowledge. (Examples of a simple evaluation may be: “It was the harsh tone”or “She sounded bored. I think it was her monotonous tone of voice.”) You may try to remove all the bad voice characteristics that you notice and adopt the good ones that you discover.
Keep It Simple And Straight
As a customer service professional, you will encounter different kinds of people. Some customers will lead you into digressions and small talk. At such times, you must help the customer to gain back focus on the issue(s) for which the call was made. Keep communication simple and straight. If you do not know the answer to something, tell the customer that you will find out. Do not get swayed by the customers. Develop the discipline to retain focus and treat the call professionally through its entire duration.
To provide excellent customer service over the phone, you need to keep your communications professional and encourage customers to remain professional.
Pdtraining delivers 1000’s of professional development courses each year in Wellington, Auckland, Napier, Christchurch, Hamilton, Dunedin and Tauranga, so you can be assured your training will be delivered by a qualified and experienced trainer.
All public Customer Service Training courses include am/pm tea, lunch, printed courseware and a certificate of completion. Customised courses are available upon request so please contact pdtraining on 1300 121 400 to learn more.