Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Most of the time people are very frustrated because they think that customer service stinks. Part of the reason it stinks is because people are unhappy and the customer service provider doesn’t appear to care. So, therefore, if you are frustrated as a customer you really want two things: first, you want someone to care and give you a sense of understanding that they get it and you want the problem solved. Therefore, if you are in customer service, my recommendation is when you are dealing with the public, try to find out what is going on with them. And if they are frustrated, you can really appreciate why they’re frustrated if you get into their shoes. You can say, “I can certainly see why you are frustrated,” at which point you will calm down their wrath. So show more empathy, it really works!
Friday, July 20, 2012
It is difficult enough to make a marriage good, and when it
is void of empathy, it’s really difficult.
So, what do you do? If you think
about it, what you want to do is get out of your shoes and get into your
partners shoes and try to imagine what they are feeling like. Rather than getting defensive and immediately
getting to that contest of who’s right, instead, say something like this, “That
must be difficult” or “I can appreciate why you think that way.” When you spend more time empathizing on the
front end you’re going to get much better results on the back end. Just simply spend more time empathizing
before you come up with your idea. You will have by far better results and a much happier marriage.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Listening is so essential in marriages, between supervisors and supervisees, and between customer service reps and the market. Very often surveys point to the fact that people really fail to listen. What we need to do is spend more time listening. The way you do it is you listen to what people are saying to you and then you play back what they said, particularly when it is important. So somebody says something and you say, “Let me see if I understand what you are saying, what you are saying to me is… this or that.” When you play back to the person what you thought they said, particularly in the beginning of important conversations you are much more likely to get on track and people will get a lot less defensive.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Sometimes people will make you feel guilty to try to get what they want. Somebody might say, “If you really cared about me you would be here this weekend.” Well, you ever notice that you feel guilty and you are likely to cave in and do their bidding? So how do you overcome that? What you do is divide up the message, after they say it. So, if they say, “If you really cared about me you would be here this weekend.” What you say is, “What are we talking about, how much I care about you or are we talking about the fact that you want me here this weekend? “ When you do it that way, the person is likely to get immobilized at which point you can actually solve the problem without feeling guilty. The key is to off-load the guilt to get to the real point so you can be less hostage to feeling so bad.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Do you ever notice people will go to their neighborhood
travel agent and book a guilt trip and give it to you? “If you loved me you would be here.” “If you really cared about me you would give
me some money.” Do you have family
members who do that to you, they guilt you into getting what they want? Well, it’s counter-productive and it’s
manipulative. So, how do you counter-act
that? What you do is play back to the
person what you thought they said. So,
if they say, “If you loved me, you would be here this weekend.” Then you simply say, “Let me see if I
understand you correctly, are you telling me that if I loved you, I would be
here?” At which point, they are very
likely to say, “well, no, that’s not exactly what I mean, what I really want
you to do is be here.” If you play back
exactly what they said you often will immobilize them and that will get
results.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Do you ever notice that you use the words always and never and you get all kinds of incendiary results? People will do that to you. Your kids will say “You are never home.” “You are always gone.” Your first thought is, “Wait a second, I’m
home often. What are you talking about, always gone?” The reality is that when you speak with always or never, those absolutes create all kinds of drag and
resistance. So to get people to be more
interested in listening and less defensive, you want to change the word always to frequently, often, or much of
the time. Change the word never to once in a while, infrequently,
or rarely. When you change always and never to these other kinds of words you are going to get by far
better results and as a result, people will listen with a lot less
defensiveness.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Often, people speak in dis-jointed thoughts and sentences. What that means is they start an idea, they stop it in the middle, they get anxious then they start another idea stop that in the middle and keep going. Very often it goes something like this, “people talk about, well, actually, they talk about a lot of things, well, it really doesn’t matter. Well, you know. Okay, this is what I am talking about…” When people do that, it is very, very hard to follow them. You might do that. So, what do you do instead? Well, you realize that sometimes your mind is ready for the information sooner than your mouth can get to it. So what do you do? You slow down. You simply complete the thought before you start another one. If you slow down and concentrate on what you are saying, you are much more likely to get complete thoughts and people will have an easier time following you.
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