When working with customers over the phone, a reps voice reflects how willing — or unwilling they are to help.
Speak too quickly and it may sound like you are rushing the customer or that you are not really focused on their needs. Speak unclearly and you may not sound confident or knowledgable. Speak in a tone that is flat and lacks inflection and you may sound bored or disinterested.
In the February issue of Customer Communicator, the training and motivation newsletter for frontline reps, business author Renée Evenson reminds readers to mirror their customer’s rate of speech.
As speakers, people can often be classified as rabbits or turtles, Evenson says. Rabbits talk very fast, they don’t pause a lot and they tend to overlap while others are speaking. Turtles, on the other hand, talk slowly, leaving a lot of silences and pauses.
If you get a customer service rep who is a rabbit and a customer who is a turtle, the rabbit will try to speed up the conversation. When they hear a pause, they’ll jump in. But the turtle will be thinking, “Hey, I am still talking, and you have just interrupted me.”
It is the rep’s job to adapt to the customer’s pace, says Evenson.
Practical tips like this appear regularly in Customer Communicator newsletter.