When people think about customer service, they usually envision representatives providing solutions and assistance to customers, but what they don’t see is the active listening that underpins it all. Active listening is a fundamental skill that I’ve used throughout my years in the field to guide every part of my interaction with customers and provide outstanding service. But what exactly is active listening in customer service and why is it so important? Here’s everything you need to know:
In customer service, active listening is when you fully engage with the customer and listen attentively to what they’re saying. This allows you to fully understand their message including their underlying emotions and intentions, so you can meet their needs effectively.
In the rest of this article, we’ll explore what active listening in customer service is in more detail and look at how it’s important for demonstrating empathy, understanding the needs and concerns of a customer, creating a positive customer experience, problem solving, conflict resolution, customer loyalty and brand reputation.
What is Active Listening in General? A Definition
Before looking at what active listening is in the realm of customer service, it’s useful to first understand what it is in general, as it can in fact be used in every area of life. Here’s its definition:
Active listening is when you fully engage with the speaker by listening attentively to what they’re saying, so you can understand their message including their underlying emotions and intentions, respond thoughtfully and remember what was said.
In other words, active listening is far more than just hearing the words that are being said. It’s when you actually pay attention to what the other person is saying (like you wish everyone else would do when you’re speaking) so that you end up understanding all the emotions and intentions that make up the speaker’s perspective.
When you actively listen to someone you’re not only able to understand them better, you also create an environment of trust where the speaker feels comfortable to express themselves more openly and share deeper or more personal thoughts, feelings, or insights that they otherwise wouldn’t. This leads to even more understanding, an authentic dialogue and a stronger connection between both parties.
It’s no wonder then, that active listening is a powerful tool that’s applicable in all areas of our life. Whether interacting with family, friends, or professional colleagues, creating an environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves and understood is invaluable and will only serve to strengthen any relationship.
What is Active Listening in Customer Service?
The role of active listening in customer service is no different – it’s just focused on the specific goal of meeting the needs of the customer. When you actively listen to a customer and understand all their problems and concerns from their perspective with all the details and nuances that go with it and the emotions underlying and driving everything, you’ll be in a much better position to provide a solution.
Not only that, but the rapport you foster will create an environment of trust that will encourage the customer to communicate more openly with you. The more confident they feel about talking to you, the more you’ll be able to understand what it is they need and the stronger your connection will be, creating a continuous positive cycle that ends with customer satisfaction.
Some people think that active listening is a soft skill only used in customer service as a tool for solving any problems that arise, resolving complex issues or dealing with especially difficult customers, but as you can see, nothing could be further from the truth.
Active listening is fundamental to providing exceptional customer service. When you actively listen to a customer, you understand all their issues and concerns from their perspective, and see all the details, nuances, and emotions underlying their situation. This deep understanding is what enables you to provide effective solutions or assistance, and usually goes unnoticed and unrecognized by observers who only perceive the seemingly straightforward outward support being offered.
I want to point out at this stage, that there’s actually more to listening to a customer than doing so “actively”. To properly listen to a customer you also need to create a welcoming environment, show empathy, paraphrase, summarize, ask open-ended questions, read between the lines, seek clarification and take notes. Since that’s a lot of information in its own right, I wrote a separate article that goes into more detail about how to listen to a customer effectively, which you can find here.
The Importance of Active Listening in Customer Service
Once we know that active listening in customer service is about truly understanding and connecting with a customer so we can properly meet their needs, it’s importance becomes clear. However, I want to elaborate on that and also highlight other areas within customer service where the application of active listening is of particular importance.
Demonstrating Empathy
Active listening is vital for demonstrating empathy, which is the primary goal of customer service interactions. Empathy is a stage beyond active listening, where you not only understand the customer you also share their thoughts and feelings so well that you can step into their shoes and see their everything from their perspective. Because of this, empathy creates a deep connection between you and the customer, allowing you to understand them better and therefore, more effectively meet their needs.
To get to empathy you have to go through active listening, as it’s the foundation upon which empathy is built. That’s because, without actively listening to what the customer is saying it’s impossible to understand them well enough to gain the necessary insights you need to empathize with them effectively. This makes active listening a vital step in the process of empathizing with a customer.
Empathy in customer service is a topic in its own right, which is why I’ve written several articles on the subject. For more information about exactly what empathy in customer service is and why it’s so important, see this article here. For my step by step guide on how to empathize with a customer, see this article here.
Understanding the Needs and Concerns of the Customer
As explained above, active listening in customer service is important for being able to truly understand the needs and concerns of the customer and provide effective assistance and support. Now you might think that this is an exaggeration and making a mountain out of a molehill – the customer wants a specific product or service, and your company can fulfill that need and that’s all there is to it. However, the reality is much more nuanced.
Each customer brings a distinctive set of needs, preferences, and concerns to the table and you ignore them at your own peril. Active listening allows you to learn about those needs, preferences and concerns and uncover the diverse intricacies of the customer’s individual requirements. This deeper understanding empowers us to tailor solutions that precisely align with the unique needs of each customer, so we can provide a more meaningful and effective resolution to their issues.
A Positive Customer Experience and Satisfaction
Simply meeting a customer’s needs does not always guarantee they’ll have a positive experience. We’ve all had times when despite a successful outcome, the customer was left feeling unfulfilled and underwhelmed. That’s because true satisfaction occurs when the service encounter goes beyond the surface, and acknowledges not just the immediate need but also the individual behind it.
For this level of customer satisfaction a customer needs to feel heard, understood and most importantly of all valued, and active listening will do just that. When a service representative actively listens to and engages with a customer and goes beyond the surface to gain a deeper understanding of their thoughts and feelings, the customer will feel genuinely heard and valued – because as is demonstrated by the very act of active listening, they are.
Problem Solving
Problem solving is a significant part of customer service and active listening is an invaluable tool in that process. That’s because, failing to listen to a customer’s problems properly is likely to lead to ineffective solutions and customer frustrations, whereas active listening not only allows you to understand the surface level of the problem, it also allows you to get to the root of it and thereby address it in a more complete way.
Additionally, active listening can lead to the customer solving the problem for themselves! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had customers arrive at a solution while either merely elaborating on their concerns or after my probing has led them down a thought process they hadn’t considered before to a solution that then seems obvious in hindsight. And of course, their own solution is usually more in line with what they want than anything we can think of. Such is the power of active listening.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution used to be my least favorite part of my role as a customer service agent until I learnt that it didn’t have to be the dreaded adversarial encounter I imagined, but rather an opportunity for resolution and relationship-building. The one condition for this was that I had to actively listen to the customer.
By actively listening to a customer you demonstrate that you value their perspective and concerns, which in turn makes the customer feel heard, understood and valued. That’s why actively listening on its own is often enough to de-escalate the tension in a conflict. Not only that, but when you actively listen to a customer under such circumstances, you transform the negative atmosphere into a positive one where all parties can work together towards resolving the issues that led to the conflict in the first place.
And of course, you need to actively listen to a customer in order to uncover the underlying issues of a conflict and not be sidetracked by a superficial understanding of the situation. That way you can fully resolve the issue by dealing with the root causes of the conflict and you won’t end up merely addressing the surface-level symptoms. This approach not only completely resolves the immediate conflict but it also prevents its recurrence in the future.
Long-Term Relationship Building and Loyalty
Customer service is not just about ensuring the present interaction is positive, it’s also about building a long-term relationship and fostering customer loyalty. Active listening plays a crucial role here as every time you make the customer feel heard, understood and valued you create a deeper connection with them and a stronger relationship. And the stronger the relationship, the more likely it is that the customer will choose the brand in the future.
Additionally, customers who have been actively listened to are more inclined to remain loyal to a brand, even in the face of occasional issues. Since their loyalty is built on the connection established by active listening, the bond can withstand the occasional hiccup. A customer is not likely to leave a brand that repeatedly demonstrates they hear, understand and value them just because of one or two minor setbacks along the way.
Brand Reputation and Growth
Active listening not only impacts individual customer interactions it also plays a crucial role in shaping a brand’s overall reputation and fostering its growth. When customers are on the receiving end of active listening and feel heard, understood and valued, they’re more likely to share their positive experiences with others. This word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful asset that builds the brand’s reputation and attracts new customers, as people are drawn to businesses that prioritize customer care.
Of course, the opposite is also true. When customers feel unheard, misunderstood, and undervalued, they’re not only less likely to share anything positive about their experience with the brand, they may share negative feedback, causing the aforementioned powerful word-of-mouth marketing to work against the brand, damaging its reputation and hindering its growth.
How to Practice Active Listening in Customer Service
Now that we know what active listening in customer service is and why it’s important, the next step is to learn how to practice it, which requires you to be genuinely interested in the customer, actively listen to what they’re saying, ask open-ended questions, tune into the customer’s emotions, respond reflectively and acknowledge and validate their perspective.
Since that’s a lot of information in its own right, I wrote a separate in-depth article about how to practice active listening in customer service. You can find it here, where all the above-mentioned skills are explained in a step by step fashion that guides you through the exact process.