Listen up! Read our tips on great listening to ensure customer service success.

Here at Wayforce, providing excellent and memorable service for our field service software customers is important to us.

Without this exceptional support, our customers wouldn’t return, and certainly mediocre or bad support would drive them away.

Simply put, there’s no business without satisfied customers! So, making sure that they’re understood and served well is always at the heart of our customer service.

We regularly get fantastic feedback from our service management software customers on this, so we know it works. How do we do it? Well, we listen! Active listening is a crucial part of customer service. It’s the foundation of our customer service interactions, and it’s a powerful tool for ensuring that our customers enjoy a positive experience with us.

There’s a well-known expression: “Listen, don’t just wait for your turn to talk.” Too many customer service interactions, especially those run by scripts, don’t heed this advice. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are our top tips on how to be a great listener

Focus your attention on the customer. Through the entire conversation. Stop whatever you’re doing that doesn’t relate to serving the customer. Prevent yourself from being distracted by colleagues or external noises, put down your paperwork or reading material, stop typing on your computer, and really focus on your customer and what they’re saying.

Smile! It’s well known that even on the phone your smile comes through in your tone. If you’re face-to-face look at the customer as you speak, use open body language and gestures appropriately and let them know that you’re listening to what they’re saying.

Don’t interrupt or pre-empt. You listen better when you’re not talking, so refrain from interrupting or second-guessing what they’re going to say. Interruptions may break their train of thought and chances are you’ll be wrong and miss some of the content of their conversation if you jump in with your own thoughts.

Ask questions. It’s good to ask questions so you can get more information on any points you need to clarify.

Paraphrase. Reword what your customer said to confirm your understanding. involves restating what your customer said in your own words. By taking this approach, you acknowledge and empathise with your customer, while taking responsibility for the situation and promising to take action.

Summarise. Finish your conversation with a quick summary of the most important points – this will ensure you both understand the outcome of your chat.

Active listening isn’t difficult, but it does take effort to learn and practice to get it right. And while you may not get it right every time, you should incorporate it as a basic skill, for yourself and for your whole workforce, so you improve your chances of achieving fantastic customer service success.

#WayTheForceBeWithYou and do let us know how you get on!