As a trainer of adults in the customer service arena, I often am approached by their leadership team asking for advice on how to get their representatives to connect with their customers. Part of me finds it so absurd that adults in the workplace don’t already know how to do this but part of me is not surprised.
I’m not going to go down that Millennial road like many of us do, although, it is true that much of their generation finds it only necessary to connect through Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. However, I feel we have all lost touch to some extent when it comes to good old-fashioned face-to-face or over-the-phone people-to-people interactions. The world is changing, and, of course, we have to change with it. But we have to face the fact that until we are a strictly machine-to-machine society, we must have people skills to survive.
In school you have to work in groups, communicate with your professors, and be able to participate in class discussions. When you interview for a job you need to showcase who you are by speaking to your accomplishments, past experiences, and what makes you a good fit for the job. At work, you have to be present and active on conference calls, in meetings, and with your co-workers. Yet we still have people who are seen as being unable to connect. Maybe it’s the word. By definition, to “connect” is to associate mentally or emotionally, and clearly, there is, for lack of a better term, a disconnect with being able to do this.
All humans have emotions, but linking these emotions to a customer interaction seems to fall short. This can be for any number of reasons.
- They don’t care enough about the person or situation to connect.
- They think they are already doing this by just resolving a customer’s issue.
- They are truly not aware how they are coming across to a customer.
So the question becomes: How do we fix it? I, for one, don’t have the magic answer, and I don’t think there is just one answer. What I do feel is that as training professionals, we need to move away from the standard role-play and skill drill techniques. By doing these consistently, we are teaching our adult learners like we teach children. We think the repetitiveness somehow will magically stick. All we are doing is creating adults who roll their eyes every time I utter the words, “skill drill.”
One Word at a Time
I am a big fan of keeping it real. You cannot have canned scenarios of customer/representative interactions and make them a fun activity to take part in. I’ve tried to do this for years and have had little to no success. But when you make it fun and realistic to everyday life, things can get interesting. I love the art of improvisation. You can take many improvisational activities and tie them back to giving a great customer experience.
Years ago, I attended a training summit and we were able to take part in a few improv games. It was a lot of fun and very eye opening for me. I immediately thought, “Why don’t we do this with our learners?” So after getting back to work, I did just that. At the time, I was a trainer for our inside sales organization and decided to try out some improv with them.
One of the initiatives they were struggling with was active listening. So I had them try an improv game called “One Word at a Time.” Basically it works like this:
The task is to tell a story that’s never been told one word at a time. The group comes up with a title for their story (HR appropriate, of course), and each person has to add one word to the story when it’s his or her turn. The tricky part is you have to actively listen to all of the words being said so the story flows and makes sense. I love this activity because it achieves two things:
- They must actively listen.
- They have to think fast on their feet.
Both of these attributes are necessary within a customer interaction. Usually the first go-round is a mess. Someone always throws a word out that makes absolutely no sense in the story that has started to form. We have a few laughs and start over. Usually by round 2 or 3 we are able to complete a story that’s never been told.
The tieback to a real customer interaction is that we just proved that if you don’t listen you will miss something, and in the sales world, that something can mean your commission.
Not only did this resonate, it made being pulled off the phones fun and memorable. After doing this activity a few times with different groups, I would have representatives coming to my class asking me what game we were going to play.
The point is, training can be fun and games as long as the message gets across, and it can be even more rewarding when learners are left wanting more. There is nothing better than being a trainer of employees who actually want to come to class, and as a trainer, knowing I don’t have to improv that I really want to be teaching it. That’s what I call a win/win!
Alaine Carrello is a senior trainer in Learning and Development at Verizon. She has been with Verizon Wireless for 22 years and has held many positions. Carrello has been in the Learning and Development organization since 2010 and recently graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bellevue University with a Bachelor’s degree in Adult Education.
