words per minute
17
sscldc
00:00
Speed
Strong communication skills have always been critical for career success. In customer service, an ability to communicate clearly and effectively with customers is more than just a nice skill that is desired to have. In fact, it’s an essential that ultimately defines the whole team productivity and customer satisfaction.
Most customer service reps realize how important their communication styles are for creating a strong company image to their customers. They do their best to communicate clearly and professionally. And yet, sometimes they still fail to effectively do it.
This blog post is aimed to take you to the basics and help you understand how, why, and where communication can break down. Use these tips to improve the quality of your everyday communication with people at work, be they customers or colleagues, subordinates or superiors. Most of the tips listed below are fairly common knowledge down the ages, and they still hold true in the online world when teams work remotely and customers use Live Chat or emails to get their enquiries answered.
Hope these tips will allow you to communicate smarter, achieve greater productivity and avoid embarrassing misunderstandings in your business communication.
1. Keep It Simple And to The Point
There’s a verse in Ecclesiastes that reads, “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?” Indeed, overly verbose statements require more time to comprehend, and tend to annoy people rather than add a professional touch to your messages. If you want someone to understand and remember what you are saying, make it concise. As the famous KISS principle clearly demonstrates, most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated.
2. Be Positive
Maintaining a positive attitude has always been one of the simple keys to success in all facets of life. When it comes to effective communication with others, you can achieve better results by simply using right wording. For instance, using a positive sentence structure encourages more interest and engagement. In other words, positive statements are easier to understand and accept. The same holds true for questions. Asking a negative question (e.g.”You don’t have Word installed?”) often creates confusion. It would sound far clearer and leave less room for ambiguity if you frame it positively or keep it open-ended.
3. Listen Actively
Active listening implies giving full attention to the speaker as well as timely and appropriately responding to what they are saying. In direct person-to-person communication, you can always count on the magic of eye contact, and react with a smile, a nod, an “I see,” to give the other person an indication of connection and understanding. In an online conversation, it’s about being fully involved, responding promptly and avoiding distractions. Take the time to read the other person’s message carefully and make sure you get them right. If you need some time to investigate something or just make a response statement, let them know you’re still involved and focused on the conversation.