Listening and Responding Your Way to a Partnership

Edwina Shannon 

During a recent seminar on Customer Retention, the phrase “A Moment of Truth,” defined the pivotal time when a connection is made between a company spokesperson and the customer. On a broader basis, the moment of truth is not as limiting as an exchange between a company and a customer. Any interaction that has differing views or needs an explanation unveils a moment of truth among those involved. This connection point could be a positive or negative experience but either experience would overshadow future interactions between the two.

This phrase, coined by Jan Carlzon, CEO of Scandinavian Air, was initially used in the context of enlightening employees of the impact that their attitudes, words and concerns have on maintaining partnerships with their customers. Partnerships? Yes, partnerships. Wow, how many partnerships were never created due to poor communication, poor attitude, wrong words and overall self-centeredness? How many have failed? How many opportunities were missed for the same reasons?

These skills are learned and truly are not reflective of personality traits. The abilities of focus, empathy, listening skills and verbal interactions can be taught or enhanced through corporate training. In an ideal world, they would only be tweaked at a corporate level having been learned at home or at school through example. 

On a business level, studies have determined the majority of customer loss is due to perceived indifference of the company to each customer’s situation. That indifference could have been deduced by the perception that the company representative did not listen to their concerns, acknowledge frustrations or develop any type of rapport with their customer during their interaction. Once again, this statement should not be limited to company/customer interactions. In this era of diverse cultures and backgrounds developing ideas together, it is imperative that listening and response skills are cultivated. 

These principles of active listening and relevant responses are paramount to any valued human interaction, especially in a one on one conversation. Through active listening skills, focus, and relevant responses, the conversation should evolve to a partnership, whether or not the viewpoints are in agreement