Customer Service

CHAPTER

3

Listen to Your

Customer (a Big

“Little Thing”)

Better Service Means Getting

Your Ears On

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

—JOYCE BROTHERS

No man ever listened himself out of a job.

—CALVIN COOLIDGE

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Describe the important distinction

between hearing and listening.

2. Distinguish between internal,

environmental, and interactional

factors that complicate the listening

process.

3. Assess your own listening skills and set

goals for improvement.

4. Avoid five particularly ineffective behaviors

that inhibit effective listening.

5. Employ four simple, positive approaches to

enhance your active listening.

ISBN 1-256-43435-3

The Way It Is . . . How Can You Help Me? Try Listening!

SALES PERSON: Hi, I’m Jerry. Welcome to Cell Phone Kingdom. How can I help you today Mr. . . . ?

[Jerry smiles and shakes hands with the customer but pulls his cell phone off his belt

to glance at it at the same time.]

CUSTOMER: Nice to meet you, Jerry. I’m George Patterson. I just want a very basic cell phone with

no fancy bells and whistles, okay? It’s for my 75-year-old mother and she isn’t interested

in a built-in taking pictures or text messaging or fancy ring tones or music. All she wants

is a phone that’s easy to use and reliable. Oh, and it would be good if the keys were larger

and the screen easy to read. Do you have anything like that?

SALES PERSON: Sure, we can get her into a nice phone like this model, Jeff. It has some pretty cool

features like a built-in MP3 player and a lot of cool custom options. In fact, we have

a nice deal on music downloads—unlimited songs for just a flat monthly fee. It’s

incredible. I can set it all up for her and make it just what she needs. We’ll have her

texting and sending IMs in no time—people love that once they get the hang of it.

I see kids texting all the time. Everybody likes to do that.

39

Customer...