Customer relationship management directly impacts your happiness and job satisfaction. It is not just about the influence of effective communication skills on your employer’s business or your commissions.
Few things are more important than being happy where you spend a large portion of your time, and the bulk of your focused energy. Communication problems at work erode your quality of life, along with your job satisfaction.
If you work in a customer service business, then you’ve heard the familiar negative refrain about how picky, angry, or demanding customers are. Well, that can’t be much fun. But is it true?
Two things are certain. First, 75% of employees complain about customer attitudes, and secondly, they are wrong. It simply is not true.
From decades of experience in high volume, high stress operations, I can honestly say that 99% of my experiences with customers have been not just positive — but pleasurable. The kicker is, it is also purposeful. I intend it to be that way.
Can you imagine how this can improve your happiness and job satisfaction?
What are the barriers to effective communication?
Now, assume for a moment that I am right about this. Why then would such a large percentage of customer service people feel the way they do? If you find yourself feeling this way at work, I am sure you are not imagining it. Why do you feel that way? Is the average customer — meaning the average person — actually rude, selfish, and demanding? If that is true then we are all in serious trouble.
Instead, could you be experiencing some fundamental barriers to effective communication?
If customers come in with a bad attitude, well, that’s a barrier to effective communication right there isn’t it? Let’s remember though, that customers often come in with a justifiably cautious attitude that can easily turn into a negative one.
What’s the solution? How do you become happier at work through customer relationship management?
The answer is, to take charge of all your conversations by approaching customer relationship management, from a perspective of nonverbal communication.
What does that mean and how does it affect job satisfaction?
Nonverbal communication: you get what you expect
Let’s not get into all the body language cues, mirroring techniques, and all the other nonverbal communication methods they teach you in sales seminars.
Nonverbal communication for our purpose is about intent. It is all about what you expect from your dealings with customers, and what you expect is under your control. If you expect only the best from people, then that is what you will invite to the conversation.
If you decide that you will only relate to the better side of everyone you meet, everyday, then the only other thing you need to do is to offer that up with your attitude.
It is like holding a door open to a more pleasurable space. If your demeanor is that inviting space, then regardless of your customer’s previous attitude, they will walk through that door. Why? Because everyone wants to feel better.
All this may sound naive to you. You might be thinking that it isn’t that easy; that customer relations can’t be transformed into a pleasurable experience just by intending it. I understand if that’s what you feel. But all the objections in the world can’t change the truth. People immediately respond to someone who is genuinely positive, and who holds a door open for them to feel the same.
How customer relationship management can make you a happier person
It really doesn’t matter what type of job you have. Employment is always based on relationship; if not to customers, then to coworkers, and even down to your relationship to solitary tasks.
You cannot escape from relationship at work, so why not make it work for you by intending the best, and expecting the best, from every one of these relationships?
You have two choices presented to you every time you engage in communication with a customer or coworker: you can either allow their attitude to dictate the course of your communication. And in that case, you will either have a good, bad, or indifferent experience. You certainly won’t be in control. Or, you can decide to be open only to a rewarding experience.
You can engage this person in a positive way by genuinely caring about why they came to see you in the first place — even if that reason was to complain about a problem. In return, that person will become open and positive to you.
The greatest sales technique of them all is actually caring about people. I mean genuinely caring about them, and then using your skills to help them achieve what they desire.
It is as simple as that, and that simple truth about sales can bring you happiness and job satisfaction.
At the end of the day, if you leave work knowing that you have genuinely cared about, connected with, and helped people, then you will feel good about yourself.
If you practice this, the next time you hear that negative refrain about the short-tempered customers, you will say to yourself, “how curious. I seem to be having a totally different experience.”
You really do get what you expect from people, and people are everywhere in the workplace. Use this fact to your advantage and create more happiness and job satisfaction for yourself. You deserve at least that.
Your work experience is largely under your control if you remember that this quiet brand of customer relationship management equals job satisfaction.
Over to you now…
Stumble it!
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Very interesting article. I was a customer service rep for years, and dealing with customers every day really does have an impact on not only your happiness and job satisfaction, but your health and overall quality of life. I recently read Shelley Anderson’s book Dealing with Divas, and while she focuses on the field of celebrity assistants, her points about not letting the celebrity or their entourage steamroller over you can be applied as well to customer service. To survive in a world where the customer is always right, you have to be able to stand up for yourself while giving them the best possible solution that you can, or you’ll never be able to live with yourself when you go home at night.
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for the lead to that book.
Yes, you are right; some folks do want to steamroll over you. That’s why it is so important to lead the tone of the communication.
I don’t subscribe the old adage that the customer is always right. The customer is often wrong. I prefer to think that the customer is always important and individual.
As you imply, you do have to be strong. It takes confidence to deal with people like that in a way that holds integrity for everyone. And integrity is important; yours as well as theirs.
That strength should be of the type that creates a genuine communication rather than the resistant type that enables you to just stand your ground, as if in a battle.
It is a real challenge at times, but always one worth taking on.
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