Purchasing and Negotiation Training

Editor’s note: Steve writes, speaks, and consults on customer service.

Encouraging service professionals to allow an upset customer to vent as a key strategy towards building rapport. When customers vent, they need to tell their whole story. “Venting is therapeutic,” I would say. My admonition is based on what I had learned during years of handling challenging telephone calls.

What makes the telephone such a powerful therapy tool? It is the amount of imaging that a good telephone voice is able to convey. Eighty percent of what a telephone service professional conveys is in his or her tone of voice. The content or words comprise the remaining 20%. The tone of voice reveals much about an individual, their intent, and their demeanor.

Don’t take my word, take JAMA’s

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an elaborate study on the benefits of psychotherapy using the telephone. A psychiatrist at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle reported that 80 percent of patients who received telephone therapy along with antidepressants indicated that their depression was “much improved” six months later, compared to 55 percent of those who received medication alone.

The inception of the telephone therapy study was in response to the increasing number of patients who failed to maintain their in-person counseling sessions long enough to detect any benefits. One out of every four patients attending in-person psychotherapy drop out after just one session; fully half would cease treatment altogether by the fourth session. A psychiatrist responded to this trend by contacting their patients by telephone to find out whether that method made it easier for them to continue with their treatment sessions. It did. The resulting telephone therapy study provided clinical proof about something that I have known intrinsically for decades.

What do you think…

Service organizations not leveraging their telephone therapy potential are costing their company money. It is my firm conviction that the cost of ignorance is far greater than the cost of training. Improve the skills level at your service operations and maximize the ability of your employees to provide psychotherapy over the telephone. So the next time you sense that you are providing therapy to one of your customers – you are.