Page 54 - Kindness - No Forward

Through some non-defensive behavior training, we were able to teach the
people answering the phone that the customers didn’t care what was
causing the problem, they just wanted it fixed! Through the magic words “I
understand how you feel”, they were able to get right to solving problems,
which reduced the length of the calls and reduced complaints.

“I Understand” Is Not the Same as “I Apologize”

The practice of saying “I understand how you feel” creates a lot of
discussion during my seminars. But it is important to practice this
technique.

Here is the simple but powerful secret behind this non-defensive response
to criticism: we can understand virtually any feeling which is reflected to
us. Whether its anger, fear, or loneliness, no matter what the feeling,
you’ve experienced it.

But while we can understand the feeling, we may not understand, or agree
with, the facts.

I don’t think my company’s service is terrible, but I’ve done business with
companies which provided (in my mind) terrible service. So I can
understand someone’s feeling of dissatisfaction with service. If you feel
that way, I can understand. Now, what can I do to solve your problem?

Take a look at this not-unusual response to a customer service complaint:

A customer calls with a billing complaint saying, “My telephone bill is
incorrect again. This is the third time I’ve had to call about this. Can’t you
people straighten out just one little problem?”

And the telephone representative replies “I’m sorry for the problem, ma’am.
We’ve had computer problems and the new system is being debugged. It
should be better next month and you probably won’t have this problem in
your next bill.”

This is a polite response, but defensive.

First of all, the telephone representative doesn’t need to apologize; he did
nothing wrong! Many of us make excessive apologies when criticized. It’s
okay to apologize for the inconvenience, but we don’t need to apologize for
the actions (unless we caused the problem intentionally).

Secondly, explaining the situation doesn’t solve the problem. The solution
is what is important to the caller, not the reason behind it.