Unit 5: Speaking to Customers
What percentage of an actor's or actress's performance on the stage succeeds because of what he or she does versus what he or she says? The best thespians know more than their lines; they also know their craft. A good customer service representative needs to be well versed in the craft of public speaking. To present information, respond to requests, influence buying decisions, and in other ways satisfy your customers' needs, it is essential that you speak clearly and persuasively. Unfortunately, one issue that causes many speakers to become tongue-tied is when they have to present important details from memory. This unit concludes with a section on memory aids to encourage you to use techniques that will not only help you remember but also, hopefully, ease your anxiety about having to remember and speak at the same time.
Sir Winston Churchill, statesman, orator, and former British prime minister, said: "A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest".
Completing this unit should take you approximately 9 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify and describe individual conversation styles;
- contrast face-to-face and telephone conversations;
- analyze strategies for addressing customer complaints and concerns;
- identify resources and techniques you can use to help you remember important information; and
- choose a method for remembering information that is most suited to your learning style.
- identify and describe individual conversation styles;
5.1: Speaking to Your Customers
Read this article, which will enable you to break down your role in a conversation into three distinct processes. To get the most out of this material, try to answer the many questions asked about your conversation style as accurately as possible. The goal of this material is to make you more familiar with yourself as a communicator, especially as someone involved in talking to others.
This article provides a rationale for why you can be a more effective communicator by using every language that matches your customers' speaking styles.
Watch this video for a new perspective on unique meet-and-greet strategies from a car dealer.
Watch this brief video for greeting strategies that may be applied in a variety of customer service contexts, not just at the hair salon.
Watch this brief presentation for tips about providing quality customer service on the phone.
Pay particular attention in this video to the differences between features and benefits and how you should use those aspects of a product to solve the customer's problem.
As you watch, consider how a customer sales representative may lose a sale by providing too much information to a customer.
This article will guide you through 15 steps for handling any business-related telephone conversation. Make sure you scroll past the embedded advertisements at the end of the article to find additional tips and warnings.
Review these tips for effective responses to customers with technical questions.
Read this article for telephone "do's" and "don'ts". Consider how you answer customer phone calls and ways you can improve your strategy.
This video provides four tips on how you can express concern to a customer. As you watch, recognize that although the video does not directly address what you should say when you do not have an answer to a customer's question, each of the tips can be applied to that situation and help you provide reasonable responses to satisfy the customer.
As you watch this video, pay attention to the step-by-step nature of the advice, which the speaker refers to as the L.E.A.R.N. process. Understanding what each letter stands for will help you absorb this material more easily.
Read this article, which describes 11 techniques you can use to speak calmly and satisfy an angry customer. Make sure you scroll through the advertisements to find the tips and warnings at the end of the article.
Watch this short video, which identifies eight steps you can follow to satisfy an angry customer. Do not be concerned by the informality of this source's name. The video is a professional production that offers a great deal of useful information.
5.2: Remembering What to Say
Memory retrieval, including recall and recognition, is the process of remembering information stored in long-term memory. Consider the patterns of memory retrieval with which you are most comfortable.
This reading provides an overview of the techniques you can use to remember things like names, dates, numbers, locations, and more. Mnemonic cues are just one such technique that you will learn about in this subunit.
The link system one of the simplest mnemonics. It is based on a general approach referred to as pegging, wherein you treat what you need to remember like a coat that you hang on a peg. Remembering where or what the peg is enables you to remember the coat itself. Because mnemonics can seem a bit intimidating at first, the link system is being introduced first because of its relative simplicity even though, technically, it is a subcategory of the peg system, which is discussed next.
This article describes the basis of a number of mnemonic cues: pegging. Keep in mind that not all mnemonics suit every person. Consider this as you review not only this reading but also other mnemonic systems that are closely related to the peg system, such as the link system. The techniques covered here have been chosen primarily because they use easy-to-understand language and are relatively simple to apply.
As you read, evaluate how well this and other systems might work for you.
Do you have a "memory palace"? Read this article about how to use this technique to remember everything.
This brief article will introduce you to three systems for remembering numbers.
Read this brief article, which shows you how you can remember numbers by associating them with shapes that look like numbers. Take a moment to follow the link to Wikimedia Commons at the end of the page. There, you will find many more examples of shapes that can be used to remember numbers.
Read this brief article, which shows you how you can remember numbers by associating them with words they sound like. For example, here are a set of words you could use to remember a phone number: Tree Hive Shoe, Tree Hero Heaven, Tree Hive Heaven Tree (352-307-3573).
With this technique, you remember a series of letters by connecting the letter shape with the shape of an object. Within this reading, you will find tables that include links to objects that look like the letters that need to be remembered. Take a moment to click on some of those links so you can visualize what is being described.
Also make sure you continue scrolling down below the "Letter Shape System" to learn about the "Letter Sound System", which helps you remember letters by connecting them to words whose pronunciation emphasizes the sounds of the letters you need to remember.
This simple test will enable you to discover the limits of your ability to remember letters. This website is designed to help you expand your abilities by testing you and then linking you to resources that can help you improve in specific ways.
While many of the resources cover the same information provided in this subunit, you may find additional information that will help you expand your memory. To discover whether or not the resources are helpful, test yourself again using this activity while applying the techniques you've learned.
