In a busy bank lobby, I recently overheard a banker reiterate a policy, only to have the customer respond irritably, "Why are you making it so hard? I could close this account and move it to another bank. You won't let me simply take my uncle's name off the account without a death certificate?"
Customer satisfaction expert Gary Heil tells a similar story. Gary had asked for overdraft protection on an account at his bank, where he was a long-time customer with several accounts. In response the bank requested his tax returns for the previous three years. When he suggested his other accounts could be collateral, the bank was inflexible.
Even though two different policies dictated these scenarios, they shared a common dilemma. The customers' requests weren't handled as they wished, which happens when customers don't understand why banks have certain policies.
Not as obvious yet integral to these interactions were customers who did not feel understood. The bankers tried to help by explaining the policies, but were the customers heard or understood by the bankers? And is understanding the customers more important than processing their requests?
Understood Customers Are Happy Customers
When push comes to shove, making sure customers feel understood is more important than getting paperwork done. Why? Customers who feel understood feel good about the relationship. They're willing to comply with necessary requirements, and they'll come back to do more business. They'll also tell others how great you are.
As Gary Heil says about customer service, "Loyalty is never rational, and nearly always emotional." Reaching customers on a human, emotional level that leaves them feeling understood can bring you many benefits.
To paraphrase an adage: if you feel understood, you will find several reasons to buy. If you don't feel understood, you won't find a single reason to buy, no matter how great the product is.
Customers like feeling understood. If you contribute to their positive feelings they'll like you. And two people who like each other get more done in less time than two people butting heads--or one who's upset while the other patiently re-explains a policy.
Shorter, more congenial interactions boost your productive. Prospects who don't feel understood raise more objections, especially on prices and fees, and make buying decisions more slowly. They use objections as trump cards against your demands, eating away at your time.
Prospects and customers who feel understood often make decisions more quickly, using fewer bank resources. Another bonus is that customers treated with dignity and respect reward bankers with their trust, which leads to openness, information sharing and efficient use of time.
Turnaround consultants consistently report that the most important yet least used tool for building customer relationships is courtesy. Customers who feel understood respond willingly and naturally to your camaraderie.
Customers who are understood value their relationships with your organisation and object less to prices and fees. Feeling understood, they're more likely to take long-term views of their relationship, which will pay off in future business from them, family members, friends, associates and businesses.
Mary Kay Ashe, of cosmetics fame, reminds her salespeople, "Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from his neck saying, 'Make me feel important.' Never forget this message when working with people."
Feeling Understood: What Does It Really Mean?
As we communicate "I understand" to our customers to make them feel understood, are we saying "yes" to whatever they request? No. Feeling understood doesn't mean getting whatever you want. Are we saying, "In your shoes, I'd do the same thing"? No.
What we are saying, verbally and non verbally, is, "I hear you. I allow you to express what you need to say." Customers feel understood when they have been able to "speak their piece," and when we accept that what they say matters. Acceptance conveys that you value them.
Respecting customers' time and experience also contributes to their feeling understood, so be sure to give customers opportunities to express themselves. This creates a powerful connection. It communicates your willingness to help them accomplish what they want in the best way possible for them. This interaction style shifts emphasis from regulations and policies to your customers.
So, how do you move from the angry customer who's about to take his savings account across the street to a customer who'll keep his money in your bank, finance his new home with you and convince his partners to move their business accounts to your bank?
Tips for Helping Customers Feel Understood
Achieving a base of customers who feel understood takes more takes more than posting a new customer service creed or running a sales contest. It's a more integrated and continuous process.
A good starting point might be your business cards. Pull one out. Is it elegant reflective of your positions? Does it convey dignity? Is this what business cards are for?
Rather than using business cards to impress or to fit a corporate design, consider a card that customers will find informative, practical and useful. Print telephone numbers in large, easy-to-read type or include direct lines for specific services. A list of services could be effective, or the locations and hours of your services.
Speaking of hours, are yours set for your convenience? Or do they reflect that your customers' needs, so you're open when they need you?
A good opportunity for helping customers feel understood is your processes. Do you make it easy for your customers, or do regulations dominate interactions? Perhaps you could you reduce the paperwork, ease its complexity or even eliminate some document requests. Today's customer-focused organisations scrutinize "fine print" and obtain regulatory approval for more friendly processes and forms.
While in your customers' shoes, look around your lobby, at your statement stuffers, statement formats and other communications. Are they talking "at" your customers, or communicating effectively? Your organisation's communication style is paramount in developing customers who feel understood. It includes written pieces, atmosphere and personal interactions. Is yours a communicating style, where conversations with customers are two-way exchanges? Or do you tell your customers what you think they should know?
Integrating communication that contributes to customers feeling understood requires everyone in the organisation to adopt the same practices. Interaction examples personal experiences and role-playing can demonstrate specifics. A good place to begin is with employee discussions of communication style.
If this sounds like a family communication course or a consensus-building, win-win workshop, it's because each contains human interaction elements. Remember, our human and emotional side helps make decisions.
Pressure for increased new sales and cross-sales may prompt you to offer more product and sales training. These sessions offer an ideal opportunity for building and polishing skills that help customers feel understood.
As communications guru Dale Carnegie said, "When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity."
Five Steps to Helping Customers Feel Understood:
1. Prepare for customer interactions with information and focus.
2. Listen to your customer.
3. Acknowledge what you hear.
4. Communicate that you value your customer.
5. Involve the customer in the process and the solution.
Preparation includes gathering background information on customers with scheduled appointments; using demographics that focus on specific customer segments; and establishing rapport in your exchange.
The more you know about your customers, the better understood they'll feel. Today's micro-demographics provide more in-depth specifics than the broad categories of empty-nesters or dual-career couples, small business or middle market. Accessing this information will help you develop valuable rapport with your customers--rapport that goes beyond opening chitchat to a real connection.
Listening is an active, not a passive, behavior. Listening means making eye contact, focusing only on the customer and conveying respect as the customer speaks. And sometimes you'll find that all your customers really need is an opportunity to have their say. That done, they're ready to move on.
As you listen, acknowledge what you are hearing. This can be done nonverbally by nodding, smiling or relaxing your body posture. Use verbal cues such as, "Oh," "I see" and "I hear what you're saying." Sometimes you may want to clarify, "I think I hear you saying ..." The tone of your voice, too, says as much as the words you use.
Your listening should be affirming and sincere, without being patronizing. For instance, "You are feeling worried. Let's see what we should do." Don't try to argue customers out of their feelings or become defensive. That fuels ill will. Instead, convey that you value customers by allowing them their say.
Once you have listened, clarified and acknowledged hearing the customer, continue involving the customer in the process as you move into accomplishing a task or resolving a problem. Rather than saying, "Okay, here's what I'm going to do," you might, for example, suggest a couple of alternatives. Try to be flexible. And by keeping your customer involved in the process, you are giving the customer some ownership in the ultimate decision and solution.
If you're cross-selling, for example, instead of giving a monologue on your products, ask what problem the customer would like solved. Then you have the opportunity to offer a specific product as though it were custom-created rather than saying, "We have six types of ..."
Also, this approach can be used as you structure loans by involving customers in determining what best fits their needs while you gain needed credit information and documentation requirements. Your marketing department can be a great source for developing decision trees that customers can use as the basis for their selections.
Dale Carnegie reminds us, "You're doing well if you can make people think that what you've said is their idea." Your goal is an understood customer, not an understood service provider.
Try to keep away from giving the power to policy, too. You know the routine, "Our policy states ..." Instead, help your customers feel confident about what your firm says and do, so they don't hide behind policies.
Once you begin actively listening and involving your customers, you'll identify countless opportunities for helping customers feel understood and for cross-selling. For example, when a customer closes an account, find out why. Learn from what the customer tells you. When commercial lenders ask about a business's aging of receivables, use it as an opportunity to explain the customer's benefit in knowing and tracking such information.
When you learn in an interview that a customer has been approached by another financial institution, spend time gaining information, such as, "Why did you agree to the appointment? What was said that interested you?" The process helps your firm find out what you've been missing and it conveys that you value and care about your customer.
Understood Customers are Buyers
You may say, "These five steps seem to work. But wouldn't two steps be easier? Step one, customers express a need. Step two, we tell them what they must do and what we'll do. Job done?"
Sure, two steps might be easier, if both providers and customers weren't humans and if we didn't need customers as much as we do. The reality is that we're dealing with humans and you want customers to buy from your firm.
Max Dixon, a communications professor and coach, says, "People don't buy because they understand. They buy because they feel understood. When a consultant helps a customer feel understood, the consultant creates a buyer."
Five Steps for Effective Listening
1. Make eye contact and keep your body relaxed.
2. Convey respect.
3. Give the customer your full attention.
4. Confirm what you think you heard by saying, "I think I hear you saying..." or "It seems like you are feeling..."
5. Respond openly to customers, "You'd like to see this resolved..." "You're hoping to find a way to..." "You're looking for an account that will..."
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