Delivering excellent customer service is critical to business success. Business leaders must coach their teams to build trust and provide value by uncovering customers' needs and confidently recommending products that meet them. A critical aspect of this process is asking insightful questions and actively listening.
As a business leader, you must observe your team with customers, assess their questioning and listening skills, and provide appropriate coaching to ensure your team maximises the value they offer customers.
Questioning Basics
Open Questions: Information
It is designed to gather detailed information, encouraging customers to share more about their symptoms and concerns. Examples include:
"How have you been feeling lately?"
"What are the symptoms you're experiencing?"
Closed Questions: Confirmation
Helpful in confirming specific details, often requiring a yes or no answer. Examples include:
"Are you currently taking any other medications?"
"Do you have any allergies to medication?"
Both types of questions are essential. Open questions help understand the broader context of the customer's health, while closed questions confirm critical details.
In our customer service training, we recommend a rule of thumb: three open questions for every closed question. However, this depends on the customer and their needs. Generally, aim for more open questions than closed questions.
Active Listening
As your team asks excellent questions, they must actively listen to ensure customers feel heard and understood. Look for your team to display active listening when working with customers.
Tips for Active Listening:
Pay Full Attention: Focus entirely on the customer.
Show That You're Listening: Use nods, facial expressions, and small verbal acknowledgments like "I see" or "Go on."
Provide Feedback: Paraphrase what the customer has said to confirm understanding.
Defer Judgment: Avoid interrupting with solutions. Let the customer finish speaking before responding.
Respond Appropriately: Provide thoughtful and relevant advice or recommendations.
Coaching Your Team to Great Questioning and Listening
Good questioning and listening don’t happen by accident. You need to ensure your team knows what good looks like and then coach and support them to enable the best customer interactions. To ensure your team consistently demonstrates good listening and questioning skills, observe their customer interactions and coach them regularly.
Practical Observation: Watch how team members engage with customers. Notice if they ask both open and closed questions and if they are actively listening.
Key Behaviours to Look For:
Engagement: Is the team member making eye contact and avoiding distractions?
Questioning: Are they asking relevant open and closed questions to gather necessary information?
Listening: Are they showing signs of active listening, such as nodding, paraphrasing, and providing appropriate feedback?
Empathy: Do they acknowledge the customer's concerns and emotions?
Take Notes: Document examples of good practice and areas needing improvement. This helps provide concrete examples during feedback sessions.
Our Retail Leadership Programme uses a coaching checklist for floor observations. If you would like a copy, let us know.
Provide Immediate Feedback: Give feedback soon after the interaction while the details are fresh. Highlight strengths and areas for improvement and suggest techniques to enhance their skills.
The Importance of Good Questions and Active Listening
The importance of asking good questions and actively listening cannot be overstated. You can’t recommend the right products if you don’t know all your customers' needs. This practice benefits both the customer and the business.
Business leaders who invest time and energy for their staff to master these skills will see enhanced customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall business success. The art of questioning, listening, and recommending is, ultimately, the art of providing excellent customer service.
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