KateNasser.com

From big brands to smaller local enterprises, the first truth is:

To make money you must attract customers, get them to buy, and hopefully get them to come back and buy again. This is why so many businesses today are focusing on delivering a super customer experience.

Getting them to buy again requires one unequaled treasure — their trust. It preserves the connection. Unlike confidence, which takes shape in the mind, trust flows to and from the heart. Trust is a risky choice; anything close to the heart is. It is a decision that has consequences and customers fear the worst.

To overcome that fear, the second truth is:

Rapport is the artery to the heart of trust

on the road to super customer experience.

Rapport is the interaction at every level and every moment.
It flows from your agents and reps.
It pings from your website.
It emanates from your packaging.
It springs from your marketing.
It shouts from your procedures.
Every move you make opens or closes the artery of trust.





Keep Rapport Positive & Open for Trust to Flow

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1. Review everything you ask customers to do. Keep doing what builds trust and change what blocks it.

   When your actions while selling show customers you trust them you open the artery to the heart of trust. Later if your customer service procedures cast doubt on their honesty, you cut the artery to the heart of that customer relationship.

   Keep trust flowing the entire time. Lands End is a great example of this. When a Lands End down coat I purchased 2 years ago (and didn’t wear during that time) spewed feathers all over my black business suit when I finally wore it, they told me to send it back for a full refund. It didn’t matter how long I had the coat! Can you just hear the trust coursing through my artery? Yes, Lands End, I will buy again.
   
   

2. Hire and train for emotional intelligence. Much is spent on training sales reps in customer rapport and people-skills. This is good. Do you do the same for your customer service reps? CSRs with poor people-skills can cut the artery of trust. Moreover, customers will mistrust your brand. “You’re nice to me to get my money and then treat me badly during after sales service.” Inconsistency & unreliability are the early signs of a hypocritical brand – unworthy of customers’ trust.




3. If you outsource your brand’s customer service to a BPO, measure and pay that company’s customer service reps (CSRs) for great rapport with your customers not just average handling time (AHT). You get what you pay for and rapport fades when you and thus the CSRs focus on cost. Else your customers believe that you value profit and saving money more than you trust in their value. Trust = buy again. Mistrust = stop and consider your competitors.




4. Design & deliver a friendly trust-building website. Is it easy to find contact information on your site? Does it build rapport with the customers before it asks them to trust you with their personal information?

   Websites that immediately show a squeeze page pop-up do not build rapport. They say “we’re greedy” and don’t want to build your trust. Related Post: We Are Selfish Websites & the Customer Experience

   Does your website truly welcome the customer? This is the beginning of rapport and trust. Does it talk about them or just about you? Related Post: The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business




5. Include rapport in the “r” of customer relationship management (CRM). Relationships are based on rapport and trust. Yet much of CRM can become overrun with metrics, predictions, and strategies. Ask yourselves, are we truly focusing on the relationship or are we skewing too much to the big picture predictors. Customers care about how you treat them at every moment. Do your actions tell them that? Even large success is the sum of each individual moment with customers.




6. Retain the personal touch even as you grow large. Do your known customers become unknown as your enterprise expands?

   Long time customers may frizzle at new procedures yet good rapport can ease them along if the new process is customer friendly. Bad rapport can send them running to your competitor for a tourniquet to stop the emotional bleeding from the loss of trust. Snippy answers like “times change” or “one bad apple spoils the bunch” will send them to social media for the empathy and validation of thousands.

   Becoming unknown is a deeper gash to the artery of trust than not being known at the start.

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Competence touches the mind and builds confidence.
Rapport touches the heart and builds trust.
Does your brand focus on confidence and overlook trust?


What Does Rapport & Trust Do For Your Brand?

• Pings a message to your customers – “friend” not “foe”.
• Gives you a second chance when your brand messes up – and remember no brand is perfect.
• Eases and speeds interactions.
• Makes negotiations more win/win vs. win/lose.
• Reduces or removes the customers’ desire to look around.
• Lowers costs by retaining customers instead of always farming for new leads and customers.
• Overcomes customer resistance to your innovation and changes or
• Surprises you with valuable customer reactions on your brand you couldn’t even pay to learn.
• Gives you the golden nuggets: Auto-renewals, auto-pay withdrawals, personal referrals.

Customer trust is an invitation for a bond and long term relationship. Your actions RSVP the truth about you and your brand.

Based on that, would your customers invite you back? Do they think you are worthy of their long term trust?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

PART I

Visionary customer experience leaders know that it takes more than a thin veneer of customer care to turn customers into their loyal advocates.

When you think of Ritz-Carlton, the image is one of universal excellence not because of the high end price tag but because the leaders consider every single aspect of delivering customer care. From vision through execution, the focus is success through the ultimate customer service.

This can happen in any organization of visionary leaders committed to superior customer experience.

It is a deep commitment, where loyalty takes root. The opposite of that — conquering customer loyalty with a few broad strokes — blocks the root of success and prevents growth.

Image by: Blockpartypress via creative commons license.

Plant Deep Roots for Customer Loyalty
The classic advice for building customer loyalty — from listening to the customer, planning & designing, to employee empowerment, brings success IF you attend to every aspect of it.

Recent Customer Experience: A Strong Growing Root Cut in Two Defensive Moments

On several trips to Minneapolis area, I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Eagan, MN. As a Hilton Honors member, I checked the Hilton family of hotels first for my upcoming trip. The Garden Inn had the features that I needed: Clean comfortable hotel near the work site, restaurant onsite, shuttle service to/from airport, accessibility to taxis, and a good star rating.

The first trip delighted me with positive customer service attitudes from managers and staff. So I automatically booked the Eagan Hilton Garden Inn for the second trip. Again, the service attitudes were warm, welcoming, attentive to detail, and flexible on special requests.

I thus booked it for the third trip on this project. My customer loyalty to the brand and property was well on its way. They had removed all reasons for me to even consider another hotel.

And then it happened. During that stay, they reserved a taxi for me to get to the work site. I came down at 7:15am, went outside to the cab driver, and he asked me for my room number. I replied that for safety reasons of course I never give out my room number. I gave him my first name and asked him if I was his ride? He insisted on my room number. I asked if he would like to go back inside with me so they could indeed confirm that I was his 7:15 am ride. He agreed.

I described the situation to the Karen at the front desk, gave her my name, and noted that of course I don’t give out my room number. She looked in the reservations book, looked me in the eye, turned to the cab driver and said, “Her room number is 210.”

Karen gave out my room number and threw my request back in my face with blatant disregard for my preference and concern. Shocked, I said to her, “Excuse me, you just gave my room number to this man.”

Karen replied, “the cab company requires it”.

I thought to myself: You take orders from the cab company and push my preferences and safety aside?
Instead I repeated, “You just gave this man my room number.”

Karen replied, “Nothing has ever happened.”
I thought to myself: So you will change the procedure after something bad happens? There is a reason room keys don’t have room numbers printed on them.

Nonetheless, I simply repeated one last time, “You just gave out my room number. How are you going to fix this?”

She then fired the final bullet: “Are you going to argue with me or are you going to get in the cab?”

What??#!? Since when is a customer objection to a hotel’s mistake seen as arguing? I immediately asked to speak with a manager. She replied: “I am the manager on duty.”

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After work I spoke with Jason, the general manager.

Even though he put me in a suite, comped me a room, and gave me dinner, he showed that he too defined customer experience as a veneer of customer care. He, general manager, severed my loyalty when, in the middle of telling me how sorry he was, added that Karen was a good manager.

Wrong Jason. A good manager doesn’t verbally attack a customer communicating a safety concern.

Karen’s approach to conquering my objection with an ultimatum about getting in the cab couldn’t even be called customer service. It was a rude, low class, insulting personal attack to silence me and get me out of the hotel. It showed defensiveness about her mistake and incompetence in service recovery.

If Karen were a staff member, you would consider remedial training. When a manager makes this attack and the general manager defends this manager as capable, it is a statement about the brand’s definition of a great service experience.

Although, they stated they would never again use any cab company that requires room numbers, their purely reactive view of great service means customers will suffer a bad experience before the hotel learns and improves. It also says nothing about delivering great care when a customer is highly dissatisfied — another critical moment, the studies show, for securing loyalty.

When I checked out the next morning and Karen was at the desk, I wondered how many other customers would unfortunately suffer that day and in the future. My memory is one of gross disrespect and disregard for me — not one of a free room and dinner.

I now have a reason to consider a different hotel brand for my next trip.

The root of customer loyalty grows from a deep and pervasive care about everything that affects the customer. The root at the Hilton Garden Inn Eagan stops growing at the bedrock of management’s expectations of its front line managers and the thin veneer of care that defines their view of great service.

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In the next post, Part II of this customer experience, I will provide a deeper list of the steps to customer experienced based loyalty. In the meantime, ask yourself — How do your staff and managers react when customers object?

Do they listen with great care and use their empowerment to make significant changes? Or do they snip back to conquer the customers’ objections and pretend to care with a thin veneer?

If you think they are doing it right, dig deep to make sure. Almost sure isn’t enough to build customer loyalty.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, employee engagement, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

I am pleased to welcome writer Pattie Roberts as the guest blogger for this post. Her thought-provoking personal stories serve up many lessons. Welcome back Pattie!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my Uncle Fritz lately.  Every spring, as I begin the early garden cleanup, I see the coffee can “Tin Man” he made for me hanging next to the rose bed, and it makes me laugh and cry at the same time.  I laugh because Uncle Fritz was a delightful nutball – wildly successful as an insurance agent, devoted to my Aunt Franny throughout her long battle with breast cancer, and truly offbeat in the way he expressed himself.

I cry because he was the definitive example of the one key thing that continues to be broken about customer service in American business.  I cry even more when I think about how simple it is to fix it.

The Story

Let me back up to 1987.  My mother had just passed away and, as is typical in many families (especially Italian families like mine), we shared our grief over mountains of food.  One evening we were at dinner at Ventura’s, which to this day remains my favorite restaurant.  As usual, Uncle Fritz presided over the table and made his recommendation for our entrée choices.  “Try the veal,” he exhorted, and everyone but me agreed.

I hadn’t had a good plate of spaghetti and meatballs in a while, and that’s what I wanted.  Besides, I don’t eat baby things.  Like veal.  It’s a quirk, I know, but it is what it is, and it doesn’t really affect anyone but me, so I don’t see it as something I need to ‘fix’.  “You should really try the veal,” he said to me as I was making my final selection from the menu.  Non-sequitur:  as I write this, I am really wishing for some Ventura’s spaghetti and meatballs.

Anyway, I try not to be confrontational over small issues (how could my food preferences possibly matter to anyone but me?), so I said something like “I’m sure it’s delicious but I am really jonesing for spaghetti and meatballs.”  After a couple more exchanges like this we ordered – veal for everyone else, my beloved spaghetti for me.  “Did you order the veal?” Fritz asked me.  Fortunately Aunt Rose interrupted with a glowing anticipatory review of the much-vaunted veal so I didn’t have to answer – again.

This is what happened when our orders arrived.   Uncle Fritz:  “You didn’t get the veal?”  Me:  “I’m really happy with my spaghetti.”  Uncle Fritz: “Here, try a piece” Me:  “No, really, save it for yourself, I’m going to have enough trouble eating all this yummy pasta.”  Uncle Fritz (cutting a big chunk of veal and putting it on my plate):  “Try the veal.”  Me (on the verge of an aneurism): “I don’t want the veal! I don’t like veal! It’s BABY COW! It’s bad enough that we eat grown up cows, we don’t need to eat the BABIES too! Take this off my plate!”  Uncle Fritz (to my father):  “What, she doesn’t eat meat?”

So what does any of this have to do with customer service?  If I am the customer, and Uncle Fritz is the CSR, why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t he listen?  He was sweet throughout the entire exchange, he was never snippy or mean, and he was paying for everyone’s dinner.

I had nothing to complain about except the fact that I was benignly but completely ignored.  He wanted to make me happy, but he was rooted in his own idea of what that was, and oblivious to mine.

I think about veal, Ventura’s, and Uncle Fritz every time a CSR tries to talk me into or out of something I want or need.  Being pleasant, concerned-sounding, and even generous is important, but it’s not enough.

Customer service has to be grounded in listening before anything meaningful can take place between the customer and the company.  Even if the veal is scrumptious.

Some questions to ponder:
- Does passion and caring block good listening?
- Is it caring if the CSR isn’t listening?
- How can we balance passion and listening?

©2012 Pattie Roberts. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Guest blogger, Pattie Roberts, is a writer and research analyst in Annapolis MD. You can follow her on Twitter @hughsboo or on LinkedIn.

Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, give us many opportunities to express our opinions to strangers. This often creates first and lasting impressions on people who have never met us.

Many would like to believe that authenticity — at any length — wins the day. This wishful thinking overlooks that people react differently to those they know versus those they don’t.

Relationships and the trust they build give interpersonal context to what is said.

Without those preexisting relationships, raw authenticity can come across as rude, self-absorbed, boorish, rigid, disagreeable, and even bullying.

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Traditional civility added to modern day social networking delivers greatness to social media presence.

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Modern People-Skills Reminders for Social Media Greatness

These tweaks create and preserve a positive impression with authenticity.

1. If it sounds like an order, it can turn people off. When we add the word please, it becomes a request.




2. If a connection’s general behavior is a bother, we have the choice to unfollow/unfriend them. This may be a better choice than issuing them an order that everyone sees. One Twitter connection tweeted me, Stop tweeting quotes about … Everyone can see his tweet. What impression of him do you think it leaves?




3. Many people see sarcasm as a form of anger. The less they know us, the greater the chance when it’s directed at them. Perhaps this old rule applies well: If we can’t say something in a positive way, don’t say anything at all.




4. Questioning people’s motives — even with formality — can sound accusatory. “May I inquire as to why you are doing this?” sets a condescending tone requesting justification. Although analytic personalities find special comfort in knowing why, non-analytics see it differently.

   If we like what someone is doing on social media and want to understand the value of it, then best for us to say exactly that. State the positive and it will be seen as positive.




5. Stating opinion as fact can leave a negative impression; stating opinion as opinion can invite a healthy positive exchange of opinions!




6. We leave a positive impression by owning our own feelings instead of assigning them to others. Statements like, “You are trying to discredit my opinion” can come across as insecure and childish. I like what Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”




7. People see listening and discussing as a positive sign of openness and strength. Arguing, bashing, and condemning can leave scars on our image and those bashed.

Civility provides a cushion of respect that eases hearing and acceptance of an authentic honest message. Bluntness lacks that civility and creates emotion that blunts listening and comprehension.

I vote for civility. It doesn’t undo authenticity. It allows others to see it.

What’s your vote?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™


“Words can woo or wound; create bonds, not scars.”

Related Post:
Honesty May Hurt but Blunt Burns Forever

7 Steps From Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, customer service, customer experience, and teamwork. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Delivering a super customer service experience is all about the choices. Simply great choices can create it! Poor choices can destroy it.

Frustration with the customer is often at the heart of those poor choices. In fact, frustration with customer behavior can make poor choices very tempting.

The best in customer service find something else even more tempting — the strength and skill to resist temptation and choose greatness!

Frustration, Temptation & Simply Great Choices

The strength to choose service greatness rests within your professional identity.

How do you want to be known? What do you picture as greatness? If service is not in that picture, your attitude and behavior will yield to frustration.

If you want to create super customer experience, here are 7 common frustrations, temptations and the simply great choices!

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1. Your Frustration: The customer wants to speak before you or more than you.
   Temptation: Seize control of the conversation and talk over the customer. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Let them talk! Your response will be far more accurate the more you understand.




2. Your Frustration: The customer wants something non-standard. This takes time, thought, effort, and takes you out of your normal pace.
   Temptation: Show your exasperation and label the customer as difficult. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Show your interest — even excitement — in doing and learning something different. This is the chance to WOW ‘em.




3. Your Frustration: You want the customer to completely populate your contact database before you help them and they want some information without being locked in your detailed procedure.
   Temptation: Ignore their preference and continue on with your questions. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Get basic identifying information like name, account # and then focus on what they need! Once you have the solution underway, validate or get other personal information for your database. Focusing on the customer delivers a super customer experience. Focusing on your database doesn’t.




4. Your Frustration: The customer is upset and venting their anger.
   Temptation: Lecture to them (i.e. There is no reason to raise your voice, I am trying to help you). Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Let them vent. When they are done, empathize and take action. Fix the situation, not the customer! If you don’t, your competitor will.




5. Your Frustration: The customer waits until the last minute for help and has an urgent need.
   Temptation: Tell the customer they should have called you sooner. Poor choice. Criticizing them for poor planning leaves an emotional scar on them that will burden you next time — if they come back.
   Great Choice: Determine whether or not you can meet this urgent need. If yes, do it. Being the customer’s hero is a super customer experience! If you truly can’t, let them know that and refer to other resources that might be able to help them. Expressions of good will and effort build future trust.




6. Your Frustration: Customer doesn’t follow an important procedure and it causes the customer, and you, repeated problems.
   Temptation: Patronize the customer with an insipid rhetorical question like do you remember I said to enter your account id not your phone number? Poor choice. Patronizing the customer is professionally immature and disrespectful.
   Great Choice: Simply give the customer the answer again. Courteous honest answers help and don’t hurt. After you have helped them, ask if there is anything you can do to make it easier for them next time. You might also review any written instructions or online design to see how to make it clearer.




7. Your Frustration: The customer wants to ask questions along the way and you want to go through your whole presentation or explanation first.
   Temptation: Tell the customer to wait until you are done. Poor choice. You are telling the customer that you are more important than they are.
   Great Choice: Dialogue with the customer; put their needs first. You will meet your needs through theirs and deliver a super customer experience.

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The feeling of relief from venting your frustration on the customer is very short lived. It ruins your company brand and your personal and professional reputation.

When you choose great listening, adaptability, patience, reasonableness, competence, and agility for sudden needs, you deliver truly memorable and super customer experiences.

Question
What other frustrations do you have with customers? Add them in the comments section below and I will help you deliver a super customer experience. I deliver the antidotes to your frustration!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Be Plentiful & Ready to Deliver Super Customer Experience

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Customer experience surveys have been standard procedure for most businesses and corporations for many years. The delivery mechanism and the assessment of answers have gone high tech.

Yet there is one super opportunity to improve every customer experience survey and it requires a double vision.

We generally think of the customer experience survey as a way to understand our customers. Yet the survey itself also speaks volumes to our customers about our customer service and experience philosophy.

We think about what our customers are telling us. That’s good! Yet what is our customer experience survey telling our customers about us?

The quick answer might be that we care enough to ask their opinions. OK, that’s a start.  Yet do we really ask their opinions?

Does the typical customer experience survey ask for true opinions for improvement or mostly for votes?  There are the comment sections yet do customers receive a timely response? Do comments turn into corrective action?

Social media has become the venue for customers to get a response.  It begs the question, why haven’t customer experience surveys played the same role? As a customer, I fill out many surveys with concrete suggestions. I never hear anything back nor see results from my survey energy.  What has been your experience as a customer?

Does the customer experience survey measure what we in business care about or what our customers care about?

Or do the primarily structured survey questions broadcast that we think we know what’s most important? When we don’t respond to suggestions, does it say we don’t care? Or worse, that customers have to complain in public via social media to get a timely response?

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Super Opportunity for the Customer Experience Survey
Acknowledge that the survey markets our customer experience philosophy and make every survey a two-way street.

1. Ask: What do you think of this customer experience survey?
2. Ask: Does it reflect what’s important to you?
3. Ask: What would you add to this survey? What would you eliminate?
4. Ask: What would make it easier to complete this survey?
5. Invite customers to help redesign the customer experience survey.
6. Connect the experience dots: Have social media teams review and respond to customer experience surveys A customer shouldn’t have to complain — and in public no less — to get our attention. If we respond to suggestions before the complaint, it says we truly care.




EXAMPLES

Lengthy hotel surveys ask many voting style questions in multiple categories yet often do not ask questions that relate to special needs.
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They ask much about the appearance of the lobby yet nothing about the comfort of the desk chair in the room where customers spend time working on their laptops.

Retail exchange forms with online clothing purchases ask the reason code for the return. Many of the reasons are valuable to improving future buying experience.
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The one blatantly missing is: “I don’t like how the garment looks on me.” If online retail wants to create the true clothing buying experience, this addition would speak volumes. Else this customer experience survey says, we don’t care about the bigger picture of how you look.

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We can reinvent the customer experience survey to produce more than a metric based scorecard. We can have it reflect an open door that truly welcomes, listens to, and responds to customers’ feedback in a timely manner.

We can even have it be the vehicle of valuable dialogue, two-way understanding, and trusted exchange that builds long term loyalty.

Are you ready to review your customer experience survey? I’m ready to help you with objective insight.

From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™


Related Posts:
Customer Experience Super Blooms When We Flex.
The Best Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

As The People-Skills Coach™, I have written before on steps from brutally blunt to helpfully honest. Yet for those who are inspired by logic to change behavior, it bears listing the smart logical reasons why bluntness bombs out.

5 Smart Logical Reasons Blunt Bombs Out

1. No Warm-Up. Picture your bluntness as very cold water. If we push someone into a cold swimming pool, they remember the shock. If we let them wade in, they adjust to the temperature and can function. Thus if we want people to function and use our message, we shouldn’t shock them with bluntness.




2. Punching Dulls the Brain. Punching bags are not known for their performance. They hang and swing. If we are being blunt to effect a change, those we verbally punch may swing away from us yet they are not likely to understand or change behavior.




3. Bluntness builds barriers. Communication is for connection. Bluntness can create a busy signal — a barrier — between communicator and listener. If someone isn’t listening, your message bombs out.




4. Bluntness undermines respect and credibility. The strength of the message is weakened by the rudeness of the approach. Who is going to respect and believe the message delivered by a blunt creton?




5. Bluntness breaks bonds. Unless we each live as hermits, we interact with people to survive and thrive. Many times the same people more than once. Bluntness may get our words out but bombs out by breaking the bonds with those around us. It may even create vengeful feelings and instigate a war (verbal or hidden).

Many people resort to bluntness, out of frustration, when diplomatic honesty hasn’t worked. Others simply lose patience with those of less intelligence.

Yet when we reach the end of the rope, why cut it with bluntness? Unless we need to use bluntness to save a life or prevent death, hold on to the rope!

Take a moment and tap intellect, logic, and smarts to find a way to communicate with honesty and respect.

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™


Related Post: Leadership & Teamwork: Honesty May Hurt But Blunt Burns Forever

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

Do you think that emotional intelligence is hard to learn? The ability to understand how people want to be treated is something you can develop — if you know where to start.

Emotional intelligence doesn’t start with a list of clues. It doesn’t start with psychic strength.

Emotional intelligence starts

as an invitation that waits for a response.

 

The heart of emotional intelligence is showing smeone that you honor their choice for interaction even if you don’t know how they want to be treated.  It’s like extending an invitation for a connection and waiting for a response instead of ordering someone to interact with you.

When you honor their choice and consent on how to be treated, you will be seen as having some emotional intelligence.  Why? Because it shows …

1. You are thinking of them not just yourself or your goal.
2. You understand that human differences exist and impact results.
3. You will listen to both your desires and their needs.
4. You see value in balancing interests to reach a common outcome.
5. You know that a person’s needs can vary daily depending on stress level, goal, etc…
6. You believe they are worth the effort to adapt – in other words, they matter!

And there’s more good news even if you are not highly intuitive.  You can honor differences and display some emotional intelligence simply by posing a question instead of making a statement.

For example, in a doctor’s office the nurse can say either: “Please get on the scale.” or “Will you step on the scale please?” The first is a statement that does not invite interaction. The second is a question that honors choice and asks for consent. The bonus is the nurse will start to learn how the customer wants to be treated through response.

Now for the caution. Here are obstacles to your great start in emotional intelligence:

1. The need to be in full control.  You are likely to bark orders vs. invite interaction.
2. The fear you will appear weak.  You are likely to sacrifice connection to protect your image of strength.
3. You just don’t care. One person told me he chose not to because it was just too much trouble.

Emotional intelligence is a sign of maturity and greatly valued in today’s global business setting.  The choice is yours. If you honor others’ choices you will earn their respect and achieve more than you can by yourself.

 

What else would you add to this list of obstacles to emotional intelligence?

What has helped you develop EI?

 

From my professional experience to your success,

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and interpersonal success in business. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
 

As The People-Skills Coach™ , I often teach others how to deal with people’s anger in the workplace. Does your boss yell sometimes? Has a team member suddenly become edgy with you? Has a customer surprised you with a yell?

If you prefer that everyone calmly communicate and never yell, you need this professional people-skill to find nirvana:

Hear the urgency before the yell.

Quite often when the boss, a teammate, or a customer yells, you have missed the urgency they were communicating before the yell.

Common leadership and teamwork beliefs encourage open honest communication without anger or yelling. Yet this requires something of both the speaker and the listener.

In the face of urgency and a listener who doesn’t hear it, it is likely someone will resort to a yell. I am not speaking about people who yell all the time. I am referring to people who suddenly yell after calmly communicating.


Do You Hear Urgency in Their Calm — Before the Yell?
If not, here are 5 ways to spot urgency and develop this professional listening skill.

1. Find urgency in the bigger picture. I was teaching a public class. The banquet room was to be setup by 7:30am so I could prepare before greeting the students. I walked in to see a room configured incorrectly and no flip charts. I calmly spoke with the hotel rep about the timeframe and ten minutes later — no change. I then said, “Fix this now!”. He quipped, “that’s good, you woke me up” and quickly fixed the problem. To him, my initial calm voice meant it wasn’t urgent. Had he looked at the bigger picture of my needing to get ready before people arrived, he would have heard the urgency in the calm.




2. Find urgency in the need to be acknowledged. Urgency is not always a deadline for action. Often people’s urgency resides in their need to be heard. Paraphrase (not parrot) what they have said. Tell them that you hear what they are saying. This simple technique prevents the yell.




3. Hear urgency in repetition. When they calmly say the same thing twice, hear their urgency and acknowledge it — before the yell.




4. Urgency lives in their lack of knowledge. Your expertise blinds you to their urgency. As they speak and your knowledge is calmly telling you “no problem”, speak up. Communicate solutions. Else get ready for a yell.




5. Hear urgency in the painful past or impending future. Many times people’s urgency comes from previous negative experiences that caused them pain or something they are anticipating. Ask great questions while people are calm to uncover their concerns — before the yell.

Bonus Tip: The more you know about people, the easier it is to prevent the yell. You learn their pet peeves, their personality types, their fears and goals, their frustrations, and how best to respond before the yell.

If you believe that people-skills and relationships are fluff, don’t expect to reach the nirvana of calm communication. It comes from knowing people!

What makes you want to yell?

What have surprising yells taught you that you can share with all of us here at Smart SenseAbilities™?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™™


Related Post: Why Executives Get Impatient With You

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

Is technology killing customer service in healthcare? Has technology removed our reason to care for others?

Technology has contributed countless life changing advances to healthcare yet I see two distrubing customer care trends.

Image by and Courtesy of:Daneel Ariantho


Our Reason to Care
As I see technicians and nurses working with me and friends/family, their behavior alarms me in two ways. Some let technology remove their sense of reason and logic and others have lost the human reason to care.


Story #1
A dear friend who is a large size person knows from experience that automatic blood pressure machines frequently report false results because of her large size arm. The nurse insisted on using that device and the machine reported very low blood pressure. My friend with a history of blood pressure issues, questioned the result. The nurse replied, “But that’s what the machine is reporting.”

My friend urged the nurse to use a traditional blood pressure device with a large cuff. This time the result was much higher than usual. The nurse, seemingly stumped, said: “Which result do you want me to note on your chart?”

Don’t Let Technology Remove Good Reason

1. Technology alone does not provide complete care. If you are getting two very different results, good judgment would guide you to question and perhaps test again.
2. Relying completely on technology assumes that technology cannot make a mistake. Yet good reason would suggest that variations or mistakes in input or use of the technology can cause faulty results.

Story #2
I was undergoing a medical test conducted by a technician. As the technician vigorously moved the wand around inside of my body, she never once asked how I was doing. I told her I was in pain and her response was “I can’t get good pictures of what’s going on” as she continued on with this painful test. I finally said “enough!”. She then said, “Oh, well if you would go empty your bladder again it might make it easier.”

Her demeanor spoke volumes about her focus. Her reason for being there was purely technological not human and diagnostic customer care.

Result: I never went back to that radiology center and told many how poorly the technician treated me. The next time I needed a test, I found another company which I now recommend to all my friends and family.

Technology is a wonderful adjunct to the human brain. Let’s not allow technology to remove our good judgment or reason to care!

Questions:

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Where in your life have you seen technology overtake people’s reason and judgment? Why do you think this happens? How can we prevent it?

In healthcare this poor judgment can be very scary. Where else do you think this error can cause great harm?

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Curiously yours,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes for customer service and teamwork — that turn interaction obstacles into professional success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

And 6 Tips To Quiet Noisy Knowledge!

Most leaders and teams hope their knowledge and experience will serve them well. We listen to it for guidance during uncertainty. Yet in times of change, is our knowledge too noisy to listen to new ideas?

How can knowledge serve us and our teams well if it screams inside when new ideas don’t fit it? Consider that:

Knowledge and experience are on a list of common listening barriers.


Interesting recent study results from the University of Pennsylvania suggest people are biased against creative (new) ideas.

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So what does it matter?


Key Concerns About Noisy Knowledge

Is timely innovation in the workplace possible with bias against creative ideas that challenge existing knowledge?

When knowledge and experience are a buoy during times of change, will people ease their grip on that buoy — early on — to listen and consider creative, innovative ideas?

What are the risks of allowing noisy knowledge to slow or stop innovation? It happens and often in the shadows.

Quiet Noisy Knowledge With Awareness

1. Bring the issue into the light with your teams. Start using the phrase “noisy knowledge” as a cue with yourself and anyone in the room who is not listening to new ideas.




2. Position new ideas as new knowledge. If knowledge is the buoy, you can add more to the buoy instead of letting go of it. New knowledge is the buoy of security for continued success.




3. Note aloud the emotional reactions to the new ideas. Then put aside the emotion to consider the substance of the ideas. By separating the emotion from the thinking, new ideas have a chance! “My emotional reaction is …, now let me consider the idea.”




4. Ask yourself and others, how is my/your noisy knowledge impacting others, the business, and success? We are each responsible for the energy we bring to or drain from a workplace, a meeting, or a moment.




5. Leaders, consider having everyone take a social styles indicator (Amiable, Expressive, Analytic, Driver) so that everyone can own their type and understand how others communicate. Communication styles affect listening!




6. In advance of any major change initiative, help yourself and team members identify everyone’s change reactions. The KAI (Kirton Adaptive Innovation Inventory) is a great instrument to help each person see how open s/he is to change. Once known, then owned and managed!

The need for comfort and security is understandable. The need for timely change, inevitable. The pathway for both, around the noisy knowledge, is awareness, ownership, and communication.

What else would you add to overcome the barriers to listening to new ideas? What’s your #7 for this list?


With belief in everyone’s change-ability,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results. Lead change with vision, courage, and communication.

Working on the front lines of customer service can be wonderful or terrible. It depends on your mindset – on what you picture — not on the customer. Surprised?

It’s actually good news. What happens when you interact with others is not completely random. Success is within your grasp because what you picture, you create!

It’s not voodoo. It simply that what you picture or think about, you focus on, say, and do.

Customer service starts with picturing that you can make a positive difference.

If instead you picture difficulty or conflict, you will focus on being right, being heard, and being in control. All of this creates the difficulty you pictured at the start.


The Story

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I walked into the airport luggage service office when I arrived at my destination and my luggage didn’t. As the line inched forward toward the service rep behind the computer, I noticed that each person leaving the office was surprisingly calm.

When I reached the service rep, he handled my problem with empathy, accuracy, and calm confidence. Before I left the room, I said to him: “I teach customer service to large corporations and reps tell me how stressed out they are. How do you stay so positive with so many people in here complaining?”

He replied: “Kate, if they’re smiling when they come in here … they’re in the wrong room!”

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He understood what people would naturally feel and he became the picture of a man making a difference.

Picture the positive and you reduce your fear. Result: Increased listening that guides the interaction to success.

Picture the positive and you feel influential with no need to control others. Result: A collaborative success instead of a target shoot.

Picture the positive and you project empathy and connect sincerely. Result: You make a difference and that is great customer service.

One informed rep with a positive attitude and one customer-friendly policy of delivering luggage created a positive customer experience instead of a social media rant.

What you picture you create!

What will you and your teams picture before you all start work tomorrow? I hope that it’s caring for customers and making a difference.

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach


Related post: Customer Service, Key Link in the Chain not Life in Chains

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that inspire the ultimate interaction with customers. Leaders have been booking Kate to bring both her customer service experience and intuition to their success — repeatedly. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

I found two people-skills articles online that popped in stark contrast — People-Skills Are the New Black discussing people-skills in healthcare and 10 Stupid User Stories, The Madness Persists  which overlooks the importance of people-skills in technical support.

As one technical profession — healthcare — is embracing the critical importance and value of people-skills, (aka soft or interpersonal skills) others may be holding on to decades old thinking that technical prowess alone is enough.

Nonetheless, many people in technical professions — healthcare, engineering, science, technology, finance, and even law — want to know:

 

What do people-skills contribute to the end result?

 

#1 Comprehension. How you interact with people impacts understanding. Attitude, tone of voice, body language, are just a few of the people-skills’ components that affect how people interpret what you say. People-skills create context and context impacts comprehension as much as your words.

#2 Influence for cooperation. Going a bit deeper, people-skills are critical if you are going to influence others. Empathy, listening, adapting to personality types, and sharing insight on tough challenges, all empower your words to do more than speak. They can transcend fear, habit, status, and stereotypes. Thus they influence cooperation and buy-in with your patients, business co-workers, customers, and clients.

#3 Trust. The big surprise for many technical professionals is that trust is not primarily built on their technical qualifications, capability, and rational data. Recent research with 14,000 takers of the Trust Quotient self-assessment test, indicates that more expertise does not equal more trust: Why Hard Trust is Gained from Soft Skills. People trust based on what seems to agree with their existing inner construct — what makes gut sense long before rational analysis begins. It results, first, from some interaction or reaction between two people not from one person’s (your) individual qualifications.

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People-skills are the pathway for end results. They are the catalytic force for understanding, influence, trust, decisions, and actions.

Without them, you are left to reach success without this energy and with the drag that poor people-skills create.

Combine people-skills with your exceptional expertise and soar in your technical career. The double focus does takes effort, learning, and commitment yet the return is great.

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

“I teach technical professionals how to interact with non-technical co-workers and customers for collaborative success.”


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is a former techie (BS Mathematics) turned people-skills guru with a natural intuition about people. Her consultations, workshops, and coaching transform your occupational focus into business success with service and teamwork. From inspiration to action, Kate will help you fill the gaps of diversity with business wins. See this site for workshop info and customer results.

Communication is the vehicle of innovative collaboration. Words can sink or stimulate innovative collaboration and teamwork.

Here are 5 real life examples of collaboration sinkers turned into stimulants with great people-skills for outstanding results.

Whether these are said live in a meeting, on a virtual conference call, or online in email/chat, change them from presuming to exploring and from limiting to expanding.

Turn 5 Collaboration Sinkers into Stimulants

1. Sinker: “The question should be …”. The word should suggests that the person who posed it, is wrong, ignorant or off base. This offense can limit collaboration.

   Stimulant: “What if we asked …”. By providing an alternate question with what if, you explore and expand without limiting others’ contributions.




2. Sinker: “Don’t you think …”. Nothing great ever comes after this phrase because it is a statement masquerading as a question.

   Stimulant: “What do you think about …” opens dialogue and true listening.




3. Sinker: “Relax, calm down …”. When people work together, respect for individual styles is critical to the trust needed for collaboration.

   Stimulant: Accept diverse styles to stimulate collaboration.




4. Sinker: “Don’t take me where I don’t want to go”. Often said by leaders when extremely different ideas emerge. It sinks collaboration because it sounds directive.

   Stimulant: Establish the parameters and criteria up front so that all can work knowledgeably within them.




5. Sinker: “We have already finalized. Why are you bringing up new ideas?”

   Stimulant: This is a common collaboration conflict between doers (aka implementers) and innovators. To foster innovative collaboration, try “Given the deadline and parameters, shall we proceed with this plan and use that idea in the next revision?”

When do these sinkers emerge?
Perhaps when people …

are results driven

feel insecure or threatened

are on a dysfunctional team with issues

lack effective leadership

face unrealistic deadlines

Being aware of these and other difficult conditions empowers each of us to watch for sinkers and replace them with stimulants — for outstanding collaborative results.

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, workshops, keynotes, and DVDs that turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success for customer service, collaboration, teamwork, and leading change. Fill the gaps of diversity with business wins! See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

Corporate and business labels come in all forms — job titles, organizational units, processes, functions, acronyms, and so forth. Labels clarify, organize, and communicate. Labels can also limit development, possibilities, and empowerment. The leadership challenge is leading beyond the labels.

Labels can speed communication and understanding. Can you imagine the frustration of having to repeatedly describe in detail something that could be said with one label that everyone quickly grasps? Ironically, that same label can shut down listening, questioning, discussing, and innovating — if you let it.

Leading Beyond the Labels

1. Ask yourself: Are you and/or your teams using labels to limit or to explore? Listen carefully for instances of building boundaries out of labels. Spotting this trend early and correcting can reduce engrained change resistance.
2. Check for “should” and “only” in your mind and in your words. One of the easiest ways to spot labeling to limit is to ask yourselves are you thinking/saying limiting thoughts as you use a label. This team member is only a _________ (job title/label). This step should be done by _________ (department/label).
3. What’s the risk of not limiting vs. limiting? Leadership requires assessing risks. If the risks of not limiting are great, you will likely go with labeling to limit to minimize risk. Else, avoid it.
4. Labeling people, even positively, builds more limits than talents. Counteract this effect with cross-teamwork, developmental assignments, and team building activities that explore beyond the labels.

Labels are alluring to many. They make things clear, tangible, — and comfortable. Hence the true danger. Don’t accept this comfort. Question it. Challenge it. Counteract it. Succeed by leading beyond the labels.


What would you add to this list to limit the limiting effects of labels? I welcome your thoughts in the comments field below. Add your voice!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, turns interaction obstacles into business success. Now in 23rd year of business, Kate delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, customer service, customer experience, and teamwork. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.