Creating Customer Connections - Persuade And Inspire With Win-win Communication

Chances are you've been in a situation where it seemed that you instantly connected with another person. The conversation was fun, uplifting, and seemed effortless. At other times, you felt like you said the same words, with no connection at all. The other person misunderstood what you meant, possibly took offense, and you very likely didn't get what you wanted.

Win-Win Communication, especially in customer service, is about creating that positive connection, intentionally.


A client once joked that there are two types of people: "Born Communicators" and "everyone else".

We've been studying people for many years, and we recognize that a hallmark of the "Born Communicators" (BCs) is their ability to create trust. More importantly, we know that it's a skill everyone can learn!

"Born Communicators" often don't recognize what they do so well. As we've worked with business and financial teams to increase productivity or create a customer-oriented culture, BCs have enjoyed discovering exactly what it is they do intuitively, so they can intentionally duplicate it and teach others.

How Customer Service Pays Off!

Let's go out of the business world for a moment, look at Win-Win communication concepts in action, and how all employees can become "Born Communicators."

A friend of ours decided to buy a pet for her daughter. They stopped by a pet warehouse store, wandered through, and left without buying anything. The next day, our friend and her daughter stopped by a small, local pet store. They were greeted as they entered, and an hour later, walked out with her guinea pig and complete pet supplies, a $400 sale.

What happened?

Simple. The hourly clerk at the smaller store used several important Win-Win communication techniques:

1. Observe, mirror, and get synchronized with the customer. Management often expects employees to be perky and talkative - with everybody. This doesn't work if your client is rushed or stressed. Better is to synchronize with this process.

Behavior: Smile, show teeth, eye contact.
Ask: A magic question: Not "Can I help you?" Instead, she said, "I know you are busy - is there something in particular you are looking for?"

Explain why before asking the question. This is all about the customer, not us. We often rub people the wrong way, especially when we are talking about our expertise, which creates the impression that we aren't listening. We are, but we've heard the situation before and we rush to an answer.

2. The Grand Vision

After making the initial connection with her customer, our pet store clerk shared her "Grand Vision": "We love animals, and we want you to love your pet and have exactly what you need, whether or not you buy from us."

The Grand Vision is just that. It's our vision that we hold for you. It often starts with the phrase, "What I want for you is..." and the goal is all about you, the customer. Trust is created, and so is the beginning of a loyal client relationship.

Comment from the Coaches:

At a bank, we heard this Grand Vision, "Welcome, we're glad you are here. We want you to have a wonderful experience with us. Have you been here before?" (By the way, we also watched this employee greet a returning client...with a greeting of personal recognition instead of a canned greeting.)

3. Make your client feel important, and create your environment to make it easy. There are two steps to implement this strategy.

a. Set service priorities, so your employees understand exactly what to do. The biggest challenge most customer service programs face is that the leaders set the priorities, then inform the employees of the policy. Instead, in our pet store example, the leaders and employees set the priorities together. The outcome was full buy-in from the employees because they were involved.

b. Create a service strategy to implement your priorities. This means you post them, and regularly discuss both the priorities and the actions that support them. For example, at the pet store, exceptional service was their number one priority after pet safety. The supporting strategy included creating a message for the telephone so employees could focus on the customer who walked in the door. The employees were involved in this process, and were extremely proud of what they helped create, so they explained the priorities to customers. The response was surprising. The customers loved this extra bit of attention, and business increased as a result.

Question from the Coach:

Has this ever happened to you? You walk into an establishment and the clerk is constantly interrupted by a ringing phone, or turn to talk to someone else. How do you respond?

What is this behavior called? When we ask this in seminars, we hear "rude!" Yet employees assume this is acceptable because nobody complains. Decide, in advance, the answer to "Who gets priority?" and discuss it with your team, then set up a system to reinforce it.

Caution: It's easy to get confused about priorities. We watched one banking manager say the customer who walks in gets priority, then punish his employees because they didn't answer the phone when it rang. Is this his Grand Vision? In our CS3 program we help you set priorities with your team that leads to better decisions and better customer service.

Creating customer connections that work requires all employees to have a level of training so they are as effective and persuasive as "Born Communicators".

About the Author

GillenGroup is an executive coaching company that helps successful business and financial executives create a "Win-Win Culture" that inspires employees to produce exceptional customer service. For more information on how The Coach can help you with transformational change management within your company, please contact Kathy at 763-241-8010, or by E-mail at Kathy@gillengroup.com.

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by: regist Total views: 4 Word Count: 983 Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 Time: 4:34 PM 0 comments