The Culture of Listening – do you contribute?

Elyse S. Sussman, associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine said that: “We can close our eyes to rest from visual stimulation, but we can’t close our ears. In actual fact we listen more with our mind than with our ears. What is at stake is the need to give meaning to what we perceive”. How and why is this relevant in the world of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM)?

Most of us live in an extensive virtual world where we interact daily. The world has become our playground and our demands are growing as we gain more knowledge in our choices. One result of this is that we are now experiencing that Customer Experience Management has become the pivotal difference for organizations wanting to stand out. The emphasis lies now on customer experience, not as much on products, services and quality vs cost. This goes as well for employee experience and management´s need to retain key personnel.

Organizations must turn their focus towards non-stop and never-ending interactions with their customers and employees. Listening is the first step on the path towards a company´s success.

The Culture of Listening

Listening is an essential part of communication, and it is different from hearing. Hearing is just that – hearing something in the form of sounds. Listening is knowing what´s going on. The more difficult listening becomes, the more important it is to listen.

We could say that knowing how to listen is a form of respect – a skill we should practice more often and invest in more heavily. And it’s something we can start doing right now – whether you communicate with a customer, an employee or your mother in law. Remember that when your counterpart feels that he or she has been listened to, he or she is much more likely to listen to your message.

Modern Management

So how is listening relevant to the basic theories of modern management? The mission of any company is to obtain, and keep, customers. Easy to say, but to achieve this, a company first has to identify its potential customers and then win their trust and loyalty – something that is far from simple to do. I believe this has to be based on active listening, as its impact is dominant in every part of any organization, regardless of line of business. Let me `bulletpoint´ it for you with a generic example:

• Marketing identify potential customers.
• Sales identify and interpret the specific needs and wants of each potential client.
• R & D have to generate ideas that can be transformed into projects, combining creativity with financial, technological and temporal limitations.

The people responsible for resolving a potential mismatch between the customer needs and the product itself are the sales team. If they are good at their jobs, they’ll be able to turn a prospect into a customer.

So how can all these people obtain their goals in their respective areas? – By using a clever series of questions and answers, once again based on the ability to listen.

EFM & listening

In our world of EFM, a refined Culture of Listening is vital: Ask the right questions, to the right people, at the right time, and then act on the knowledge gained. None of this can be achieved without active listening. Only then will an organization be able to meet the customers’ requirements, alter internal culture and retain valuable personnel.

How can you contribute?

Stop talking, try to be silent and listen instead – take your time. Then start asking meaningful and to-the-point questions, as you now can base them on actual knowledge combined with genuine interest.
Result: You will be the difference in meeting, even exceeding, expectations from customers and employees – turning deserters into ambassadors.

Remember, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason…