The num­bers are in—the edict has been passed down through the chan­nels and the ball is now in your court. “Increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores.” Or, “Drive more sales.” Or, the neb­u­lous “Build bet­ter rap­port with cus­tomers.” Sound famil­iar? If your job involves man­ag­ing a call cen­ter staff, undoubt­edly, you face pres­sure to do bet­ter and moti­vate your staff to be more per­sonal, or more helpful—whatever that “key” ele­ment is that your rep­re­sen­ta­tives need to do in order to increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and sales.

So what’s miss­ing? What is the secret ele­ment that your rep­re­sen­ta­tives seem to be miss­ing when deal­ing with cus­tomers? You under­stand that, ulti­mately, to increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, your staff needs to con­nect with cus­tomers and build rap­port, but how do you make build­ing rap­port a real­ity and actu­ally train your staff to be effective?

Iden­tify the under­ly­ing motivation

At the heart of every call placed to a cus­tomer ser­vice or sup­port line is an under­ly­ing need to resolve an issue, to gather infor­ma­tion, or to com­plete a step in a process (for exam­ple, call­ing to have credit approved for a loan). It goes with­out say­ing, in other words, that peo­ple don’t sim­ply call a company’s help or sup­port line because they want to chat.

Whether the moti­va­tion to place a call is to avoid a has­sle, or to take a pos­i­tive step, you first need to train your staff to rec­og­nize and work with the emo­tional dri­ver behind the call. Are callers moti­vated to move away from a has­sle (for exam­ple a non-functioning copy machine), or toward a pos­i­tive out­come (for exam­ple, sign­ing up for the­ater tick­ets). By ask­ing your cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives to iden­tify and start with the core moti­va­tion your callers present, your staff will begin the call with appro­pri­ate goal and tone in mind.

For exam­ple, if you oper­ate a credit card sup­port cen­ter, you prob­a­bly deal with a lot of callers who are late with a pay­ment or who are call­ing to dis­pute a trans­ac­tion. The tone your staff needs to estab­lish is there­fore, “Let’s help you solve your finan­cial issue eas­ily and ease your stress.” On the other end of the spec­trum, if your com­pany offers home financ­ing, and your callers reach out to you to move toward a pos­i­tive out­come, your staff will need to estab­lish a tone that projects “Great! Let’s help you get your financ­ing approved so you can find that dream home.”

Robots don’t build rapport

If your call cen­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tives work from a script—as many do—it can be easy for a call to sound like a con­ver­sa­tion between a per­son and a robot. How­ever, even with a script, it’s impor­tant to still encour­age your staff to act nat­u­rally and be con­ver­sa­tional, warm, and per­sonal with cus­tomers. Remember—your cus­tomer rep­re­sen­ta­tives are often the only human aspect of your com­pany that many peo­ple will have con­tact with, so encour­age your rep­re­sen­ta­tives to use the script as a guide­line for points to cover in the call, but not to rely on the script as their only means of con­ver­sa­tion and inter­ac­tion with the customer.

The “mir­ror” example

A great anal­ogy to help build rap­port is to have your staff think of a mir­ror when they speak with a customer—reflect back the tone, lan­guage, pace, and action of the per­son they’re speak­ing with. Stud­ies have found that you build rap­port rapidly when you use mutual lan­guage. By para­phras­ing and using the cho­sen lan­guage of the per­son you’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing with, it’s eas­ier to estab­lish trust and build rapport.

Now, obvi­ously, if your rep­re­sen­ta­tive has an irate cus­tomer who is rude, uses foul lan­guage, or has a harsh tone, mir­ror­ing does not mean that your rep­re­sen­ta­tive should match the caller’s tone. By “mir­ror­ing,” we mean that you should teach your staff to use the same words (for exam­ple if a cus­tomer says “credit card state­ment,” your rep­re­sen­ta­tive should use the word “state­ment” instead of “credit card bill”) and gen­eral pace of the cus­tomer. Some cus­tomers will be very non-engaging and want the call to be brief and to the point. Oth­ers may enjoy chat­ting and desire small talk. Advise your staff to take into account words, tone, and the customer’s pace.

Build rap­port through listening

Do you know what most peo­ple are inter­ested in? Them­selves and their prob­lems. It may sound self­ish, but espe­cially in the con­text of a cus­tomer sup­port cen­ter call, peo­ple do not call you because they want to hear more about your prod­ucts. Cus­tomers call you because they want to talk about their needs and because they want their issue resolved.

By teach­ing your staff to lis­ten to your cus­tomers—truly lis­ten to your customers—your cus­tomers will come away from the call feel­ing val­i­dated and respected. Keep in mind that true lis­ten­ing involves more than not talking—listening means that you keep your mind focused on what the cus­tomer is say­ing, para­phrase back to the cus­tomer what you hear, and are able to for­mu­late a solu­tion or guide the cus­tomer based on what you hear them say. If you can help your staff mas­ter the skill of atten­tive lis­ten­ing, you’ll be well on the way to build­ing cus­tomer rapport.

Explain the question

Finally, to help build rap­port, teach your staff to “explain the ques­tion.” Cus­tomers appre­ci­ate know­ing why and what you’re doing with the infor­ma­tion you ask. So if your rep­re­sen­ta­tive asks for a customer’s address, have them explain why the address is necessary—“Can I have your address so I can con­firm that your account infor­ma­tion is up-to-date,” for exam­ple. By tak­ing that sim­ple step of adding the “so that I can …” you won’t come off as though you’re inter­ro­gat­ing the customer—you’ll instead project that you value them, and your cus­tomers will be more recep­tive to pro­vid­ing the requested information.

Build­ing rap­port – a win-win

Build­ing rap­port with cus­tomers is a multi-faceted process, but by invest­ing the time and train­ing, you will be tak­ing pos­i­tive steps to make your cus­tomers feel val­ued. Val­ued cus­tomers are sat­is­fied customers—and that’s a win-win for you, your cus­tomer, your com­pany, and your numbers.

If you are inter­ested in learn­ing more about build­ing rap­port and improv­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, , Impact Learn­ing Sys­tems offers train­ing pro­grams that get to the heart of cus­tomer ser­vice and result in mea­sur­able pos­i­tive out­comes for companies.

Peggy Car­law is the founder of Impact Learn­ing Sys­tems, a lead­ing train­ing com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions between front-line employ­ees and cus­tomers. Peggy is co-author of sev­eral books pub­lished by McGraw-Hill, includ­ing Man­ag­ing and Moti­vat­ing Con­tact Cen­ter Employ­ees and The Big Book of Sales Train­ing Games.

Peggy Carlaw

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