Customer Tells

Meeting and Exceeding Customer Expectations

Customer Tells will help you build better relationships with existing clients and develop key skills to understand the needs and exceed the expectations of new customers. Based on thousands of hours of customer service training, Customer Tells includes two core parts. In the first half of the presentation, using listening skills, conflict resolution and win-win conversation, participants learn to pick up key traits about internal and external customers including their priorities, needs and expectations. Then participants will learn the advanced skills in reading customers moment to moment to pick up such reactions as impatience, buying signals and frustration. Finally participants will engage in an introspective process to not only understand their own personality and communication style but to read and adapt to the style of their customers. The book, CustomerTells (Kaplan, 2007), delves deeply into initiating and improving relationships with internal customers, external customers, family and friends.

Key Phrases

Customers will “tell” you how to sell them
People do things for their reasons not yours
Seek first to understand before you seek to be understood
If the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail

The Fundamentals

Following the Golden Rule: Treat People How You Want to be Treated
Learn to use the skill of proactive Self-Talk to effectively generate positive attitudes in the customer interactions
Learn how to handle a customer’s negative emotions
Learn the skill of Active Listening
Understand the Psychology and “Vicious Cycles” of Conflict
Conflict resolution and prevention skills
How to deliver “Soft No’s”
Using Win-Win vocabulary

Advanced Skills:

Following the Platinum Rule: Treat people how they want to be treated

3 Layers of Tells

In-the-Moment Tells
- Verbal tells: learn to notice changes in customers’ vocal inflection, changes in word choice, “throw-aways” or side comments, and changes in pace of speech. Then learn what these changes mean about the customer and how to react appropriately.
- Body Language tells: reading their eyes, changes in skin color, facial expressions, gestures, and body language.
- This will allow participants to read how the customer is reacting to them in the moment: whether they are surprised, gauge their interest level and recognize a shift in emotion and more.
Communication Style Tells
- Learn the Tells to read a customer’s Communication Style
- Participants learn what their own style is and then how their style can best interact with each of the four styles, including identifying “Your Most Difficult Style.”
Cultural Tells
- Understanding the customer’s cultural heritage provides a clear insight into the customer’s behavior patterns, expectations, norms and values