Communication
has been a business buzzword forever. You can go back in history and
find diatribes by businessmen on communication as far back as the great
Roman and Greek civilizations. Obviously, it must be a very important
aspect of business as well as everyday life. The irony lies in the fact
that many, many businesses never train their employees in how to
effectively communicate with other people. Not only is effective
communication ignored in the workplace, it is catastrophically ignored
in the area of customer care.
Wikipedia's
general definition of communication is, "Communication is the process of
transferring information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a
medium in which the communicated information is understood by both
sender and receiver." This simple definition describes the rudimentary
act of communicating, but could never in a million years describe the
complex act of human communication. Humans communicate with each other
in a myriad of ways and over many different mediums. Almost all
college degrees require some study in communication. Although (in my
experience) the general studies college communication classes miss the
mark (that being to teach students how to communicate in the college
environment in which they find themselves), at least degree curriculums
realize the importance of some kind of knowledge of communication in
everyday life. I believe that the general public is by and large
uneducated in
the art of communication. A standard model of communication might look something like this:
Information
Source>>>>>>>Transmitter>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Receiver>>>>>>>>Destination
(message) (signal/received signal) (message)
Believe
it or not, this model is a derivative of Shannon's model of
communication which was introduced in 1948. Yes, 1948. Communication
models haven't changed much in many, many years because the models
themselves are somewhat timeless. This is because human communication
at its basest levels doesn't change much over time. With the addition
of email, the internet, video conferencing, and the many technological
advances in the last twenty years, one might think that the models
themselves might be antiquated. This is simply not true. Basic
communication involves a sender, a message, a receiver, and feedback.
That's really all there is to it. Or is it??
How many times have
we had an argument with our spouse or significant other and one of us
insisted that the other said this or that thing that we really can't
remember ever saying or even thinking. Communication, unfortunately
cannot really be defined by a model, it is a living breathing thing of
its own that is constantly changing and constantly dynamic. What people
actually "hear" oftentimes may not be what was actually "said" or
intended by the sending party. I believe this anomaly occurs because in
many instances of communication, people "hear" what they want to hear;
they interpret based on their prior experience and based on their
perception of what was said rather than on what was actually said;
selective hearing at play, indeed!
When I was a drama teacher,
one of the hardest concepts to convey to my drama students was the
dynamic nature of how a play communicated to the audience. Theatre is a
dynamic medium. Each and every audience member reacts to the play,
whether it is a comedy, drama, or musical, in unique and personal ways.
Every audience member brings their own personal experiences into the
theatre, and their reception of the "communication" being offered from
the stage is determined by how they "personally react" to the action on
stage. This is why live theatre must be rehearsed well and the actors
must know exactly what they are doing line by line and stage cross by
stage cross because the reaction will never be the same from night to
night.
We did an outstanding production of "The Diary of Anne
Frank." I was able to assemble a cast of actors who were exquisitely
fitted to their parts and the production was incredibly well received. I
use this as an example because the personal experience of the attendees
was such an integral part of the success of this play. What I
discovered through this production was that the older audience members
who remembered the actual events were so moved by the production that
they were often beside themselves with emotion. The younger members of
the audience, although they liked the play weren't nearly as moved. I
also noticed a full spectrum of reaction throughout all of the audience
members which I contend was triggered by their own experiences. Whether
it was response to the absolute inhumanity of the situation, or
response to some sense of their own lost youth, reactions were
different. I firmly believe that each and every person who saw that
production had a unique reaction to it based on their own personal
experiences in their life.
This is the secret to learning how to communicate with humans. Each
and every encounter is unique. It is impossible to solve customer care
problems off of a script. Employees must be trained
to apply
this philosophy of "uniqueness" to their everyday dealings with
clients. One of the best "life lessons" my dad ever taught me was that
almost every time that someone gets mad at you, it has nothing to do
with you or the situation you were in with that person. There is always
some underlying reason why people get angry and it generally has
nothing to do with the present situation. And indeed customers often do
get mad and the employee gets flustered but if they are trained to
understand that the customer is not mad at them but at the situation and
trained to placate them instead of returning fire, most situations can
be defused efficiently. If customer care representatives and employees
who have face to face dealings with customers can understand this
concept, it will make their jobs ever so much simpler.
Intertwined
with knowing how to communicate with people is being trained in how to
listen. Listening is so vitally important and, I fear, is the most
lacking element of effectively dealing with customers. Most of us fail
miserably in this area. Most of us rarely really listen to anyone.
Many of us find ourselves creating our responses in our minds rather
than really listening to what someone is saying. This is true, I
believe, in casual conversation. It takes a great deal of effort to
really "listen" to what other people are saying. Think about how often
our minds wander and we can't really remember what was being said to us
when we are engaged in conversation with another person. It happens all
the time. This is because we haven't trained ourselves to really
"listen" to what the other person is saying.
One of the hardest skills for actors to master is the art of
listening when in a play. Great actors do their best acting when the
other actors are speaking. Make it a point sometime to watch your
favorite actors when they are not talking. You will find that the good
ones will always appear to be engaged even when they are not speaking. I
beat this into my drama students and they were very good at staying
engaged in the scenes when they were not speaking. Probably one of
reasons it was so important to me was because of how bad I was at it
when I was high school. We did a production of "To Kill a Mockingbird"
when I was a junior. I was one of the leads in the play and during the
courtroom scenes; we had to watch the trial and had no lines. I was a
rascal and did everything in my power to "NOT" pay attention in those
scenes. In retrospect I am truly ashamed for my behavior, but I think
as I continued my training in college and became a teacher of drama that
my shenanigans were greatly responsible for my insistence on my
students learning this very important aspect of acting!
One on
one effective communication and effective listening is "constant" in
achieving Consummate Customer Care! Achieving this goal depends so
greatly on management listening and communicating with employees in
order to teach them to listen and communicate with customers. (I could
not have possibly taught my young actors this important lesson if I had
not listened to their input and allowed them to communicate with me.)
This is such an urgent concept!! Who listens to anyone who basically
says "do what I say, not what I do"! No one does! Therefore, if
management does not listen and communicate well with their employees,
the program of "Consummate Customer Care" really never gets past the
rule stage!
By
Barry Andrews
Barry Andrews had been successful in many different areas of business and education.
