Diane Berenbaum's interview on Customers Rock! stresses the importance of listening to customers until they feel that you empathize with them. The ultimate is Level 4 listening, rare in call centers, about which she says, "Sometimes we like to call it 'silent surfing'; you are on each others’ same wavelength."
This is hard for me. But there are different kinds of customers, and some of them, especially men, want results instead of empathy. By the end of the call, they all want results. The trick, for me, is to listen so quickly and carefully that I know what they want they're going to say next, what they really need. Maybe that's a form of 'silent surfing.' Then I can follow up my expression of empathy with an assurance that I think I know how to help them.
I have learned to interrupt with empathy, and then solve their problem. Some customer service agents, taught never to interrupt a customer, end up making the customer even more angry by letting them go on and on without giving the best evidence of empathy: "Let me help you with that."
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