In New York City, you can still get a job as a human sandwich board advertising a shop or service. Outside our office, there’s often someone with a sign promoting Foxy John’s pub, which is down a side street and not immediately visible from Third Avenue. When I walk uptown on the way to work, a man with a sign for Dunkin’ Donuts repeatedly shouts, “Dunkin’ Donuts, halfway down the block!” The problem is, he’s said this so many times that you can’t understand a word he’s saying.
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| Ruthanne Terrero, CTC, Vice President–Content/Editorial Director |
How often do we run into people who have been providing a service for so long they have literally no concern if you understand them? It could be someone in a store or doctor’s office who needs you to sign something but speaks so quickly you have to ask them three times to repeat themselves.
Communication fails when a person isn’t focused on getting positive results. At the bank recently, the teller took a check I had handed him for deposit and wordlessly walked away. Upon his return, he told me he couldn’t deposit into my savings account because of the way it was made out. I started to leave, but then he mumbled, “But I can deposit this into your checking account if you want.”
Had he given me this choice up front, we’d have saved 10 minutes, avoided my frustration and made the eight people standing behind me in line a lot more fond of me than they were at that moment.
Travel advisors are masters at communicating. When a client asks if American Airlines flies to Antarctica, the answer isn’t “no,” leaving the person wondering how he’s going to ever get there. Rather, it’s the onset of a conversation about why you want to go there and the different options for transportation. When a person asks a question or expresses a need, they’re seeking to be brought on a journey through your service process. Does your office have a set method for executing this journey to get the person where they want to go?
In the not-so-good old days, if you needed something at the hardware store, you were at times at the mercy of the people who worked there. You could easily be turned away immediately if they didn’t have what you were looking for. Even worse, if you didn’t have enough information about what you needed, you could be met with a sarcastic response because you were a poor, simple human being who clearly didn’t have a clue. That changed when stores like Home Depot and Lowes opened up with service mantras aimed at drawing the customer in and consulting with them so they’d return again and again.
It’s not easy. People do have odd questions about travel. A recent ASTA survey about bizarre client requests included, “Can I fish off of the cruise ship?” and “How can I get to Europe without going by air or sea?” But some things are asked because there are underlying concerns. Try conducting role-playing exercises with a colleague where one of you makes a request that’s not exactly clear and the other tries to determine why the question is being asked.
Learning to guide conversations in this manner will make your day go a lot more smoothly and you’ll have some very happy clients who feel as if they’re being heard, which is all any of us want.