Everyone is familiar with the term “Active Listening”… It means listening intently and repeating back to the audience what you just heard. Two primary reasons employees use active listening is to…
- Solve a problem
- Learn more so we can sell them
It’s a great skill…for those purposes. It gives you more information and allows you to confirm what it is you are hearing so you can accomplish one of these two purposes.
“Customer Listening” is different. Customer listening is where you listen for a different purpose than active listening…your listening to learn more about their experience. When you are listening to them about their experience you take on a different role. Your questions become different because you have a different goal and objective in mind.
ACTIVE LISTENING uses questions such as…
- “Tell me about the problem or issue you are having?”
- “What happened that caused this issue to happen?”
- “Based on what I am hearing, it sounds like you are looking for more of XYZ, is that correct?
- “I hear what you are saying about your situation, it sounds like you might need our XYZ product/service, which would help you get what you’re trying to do done more efficiently, is that correct?”
- Other similar questions
CUSTOMER LISTENING uses questions such as…
- “Tell me about the experience you had with our company…was it a WOW, good enough, or substandard?”
- “What parts of the experience you have with us that you love and which ones drive you nuts?”
- “If you could change one thing about the experience you have with us that would make you really happy…to a point where you would want to tell all your friends, what is that one thing?”
- “Which groups of our employees do you love working with and which ones aren’t delivering you an incredibly awesome experience when you interact with us?”
They are different…they are both useful…they are both needed…but they get different results.
In simple terms…Active listening is about solutions, features, and benefits. Customer Listening is about helping your customer have a remarkable and memorable experience.
Here’s the magic…if you are trying to get more Word-of-Mouth, Customer Listening gives you more insights into what they will be talking about. The majority of conversations on social media channels is “experiential”…much more so than features, functions, or benefits of your products or services. The input from Customer Listening is what tells you they are talking about or would like to talk about…if you give them the opportunity.
Even if you think about a “customer service” issue they are having…they have called and were upset about something that happened. This is usually about an issue with your products or services. If you solve the problem, this is great…but it doesn’t get talked about. However, HOW you solved the problem and HOW they were treated and HOW you made them feel is what gets talked about on social media.
With all your active listening skills you have been successful at uncovering the issue and possibly even sold them some additional goods. But it isn’t what they will talk about. HOW you handled this discussion and HOW they felt after the call is what they talk about. People are much more willing to talk about how they feel than how there problem was solved.
A real example that has happened to me that might help bring this home for you. I had an issue with Comcast about what they promised vs. what they delivered. I called 1-800 Comcast and as expected, spent a bunch of time on the phone being told they couldn’t do anything for me. I chose to take this to twitter and contacted @ComcastCares after calling 1-800 Comcast. They responded quickly (within 15 minutes) and wanted to learn about my problem (active listening). When I explained the issue they bumped me up to their “executive service” group to tell them about it. After some discussion, they chose to resolve my issue to my satisfaction. That was great…but it wasn’t worth sharing or talking about. However, what was worth talking about was “how” I was treated in the executive group experience vs. the phone experience. I told my 10,000 followers/friends/connections what a pain the call center was and how refreshing the “twitter group” was and that they showed me how much they cared about my business. No one asked me to tweet out my feelings…I did that on my own because they made me feel like a real customer, not some account number they didn’t care about. And by the way, I never once talked about the products/services/billing issues I was having…only the experience.
I am not alone…this is how your customers act as well…and what they talk about.
They used “Customer Listening” to find out more about my experience…this was as much of their interest as the issue with the products/services/billing. They could solve those in about 15 seconds. But what they wanted to know is how I was feeling about dealing with them and apologized for the way the call center responded with the experience.
CUSTOMER LISTENING is about listening to how I feel, how I want to be treated, how they can make me feel special, and how they can truly “help” me and improve my life/business. It isn’t about learning more about my wants/needs so they can sell me more or even to solve the issue I am having. This is “active listening” and it has a very valuable purpose.
If you really want to create “Word-of-Mouth on Steroids” in the world we live in today, it’s becoming a requirement to incorporate “Customer Listening” into your organization. Combine Customer Listening with active listening and you have a winning formula where you get three huge benefits…
- You understand the customers issue/problem (active listening)
- You understand how the customer feels and wants to be treated (customer listening)
- You get Word-of-Mouth on steroids on social channels (customer listening)
This helps you build a differentiated brand and a strong competitive advantage. No longer are you a commodity in your customers eyes…you are the one that makes them feel special…because you know what is most important for your customers…because you use CUSTOMER LISTENING.
