Tightrope: You have to listen to customers, not just hear them
— -- "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." This statement is funny and can be misunderstood if we hear it without listening. All day long our ears automatically hear sounds around us. But how much of it do we really listen to?
Being heard and actually being listened to are two separate things. The last couple of weeks have given me the chance to see that principle up close.
A couple of weeks ago while having lunch with my buddy Marcy our conversation turned to small businesses. I told her I had purchased two swivel chairs from a local furniture company a couple of years ago and a chair had stopped swiveling. I went on to tell her that I planned to call the company later that day to see if they would come out and repair the chair.
Marcy laughed and said, "Good luck; I selected a chair from that company a couple of years ago and was told it was a special order. When the chair arrived three months later it was the wrong one." After several months of trying to convince them that they got the order wrong, Marcy said, "I finally gave up and just kept the chair."
She blamed the experience on the company being a small business. After that she turned to large companies for such purchases. She assured me that it wouldn't be easy trying to get the company to do something about the chair.
The next morning I called the store. To make a long story short I was connected to several different people. Not one let me complete my thought before interrupting me to tell me that I would need my sales slip and proof of purchase before they could discuss the situation further, or they would say the chairs were not under warranty. With each person I would ask if they would simply call the manufacturer of the chair to see if they could help. Each time I was told that nothing could be done. One store employee suggested I buy a new chair.
After a few days of going around and around on the phone I decided to try a different approach. I believed that I wasn't having success because no one was listening to me.
So I drove to the store. When I arrived I saw the saleswoman who had sold me the chairs. We chatted for several minutes, and I asked her if she recalled selling me two swivel chairs. She said she remembered. We continued talking about nothing in particular.
She finally asked if I was looking for something in particular she could help me with. I told her I felt at a disadvantage because one of the chairs was broken and I couldn't find my sales slip. I went on, saying that I had looked all over the underside of the chair in search of the manufacturers' label to see if a call to them might help me to get the chair repaired. She listened closely as I detailed the problem with the chair. After I finished my story, she walked over to her desk, looked through what appeared to be a catalog, wrote something on a piece of paper and then phoned the service department. She made arrangements for a repairman to come look at the chair and see if it could be fixed or should be replaced.
According to the saleswoman, that particular brand of chair had an extended warranty.
Now, the others at the company could have done the same thing. The problem was they weren't listening. Listening is an important part of the communication process, one that requires a lot of practice. I know this first-hand because listening was not easy for me. Often times I thought I knew what the other person was going to say, and if they were taking too long to say it, I would interrupt and finish their sentence. This behavior drove family and friends crazy. Or sometimes I stopped listening and interrupted because I thought that I knew what the speaker was going to say and I preferred not to hear it. Whatever my reason, in time I learned that listening requires nothing more than just that. It requires no argument, no judgment and no interpretation, just listening, that's all.
When the true art of listening is used, we are able to hear what is being said and what is not being said. Listen all the way to the end and make no assumptions along the way. If you get caught up in thinking about how you want to respond or what you want to say, then listening becomes impossible. The mind cannot handle these two things at the same time.
As an entrepreneur, you must become a good listener, a true listener, so you can know the needs of your customers and not assume that you already know what they are. When and if you do this, your customers' trust and confidence in you and your business will increase.
Gladys Edmunds' Entrepreneurial Tightrope column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of her columns. As a single, teen-age mom, Gladys made money doing laundry, cooking dinners for taxi drivers and selling fire extinguishers and Bibles door-to-door. Today, Edmunds is founder of Edmunds Travel Consultants in Pittsburgh and author of There's No Business Like Your Own Business, a six-step guide to success published by Viking. Her website is www.gladysedmunds.com. You can e-mail her at gladys@gladysedmunds.com.