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Active Listening: Communication and Empathy as an IT Leader

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Active listening is an essential skill for an IT leader. Your ability to communicate effectively and show empathy impacts your team’s success.

Focusing on what your employees say and understanding their points of view help you make decisions and resolve issues. These actions build trust, respect, and collaboration among your team.

Practicing communication and empathy with your team increases employee engagement, performance, and productivity. These actions elevate job satisfaction, employee morale, and attraction and retention rates. The results strengthen your bottom line.

Engage in the following behaviors to practice active listening and empathy as an IT leader.

Recognize Verbal and Nonverbal Cues

Pay attention to your employee’s tone, facial expressions, and other body language. These cues provide insight into how your employee may be feeling.

Keep in mind these emotions might not be verbally expressed. Or, your employee could say they are fine when they are not.

Focus on what your employee is and is not saying. Acknowledge what they are saying and how they are feeling. Ask follow-up questions to uncover more information.

For instance, “Thank you for sharing you feel about this situation. Would you share a bit more about your thoughts? I would like to hear more about your perspective.”

Process Verbal and Nonverbal Information

Work to understand the messages you receive from your employee. Also, keep track of the points made during the conversation.

For instance, “Here are some key points and areas of agreement and disagreement from our conversation. Here are more pieces of information to gather and suggested next steps. What do you think?”

Share Appropriate Responses

Use the information you gathered to reply to your employee. Include verbal acknowledgments, clarifying questions, or paraphrasing to show you were actively listening.

For instance, maintain appropriate eye contact, facial expressions, and body language while responding. Also, nod your head and use acknowledging phrases such as “That is a great point.”

Follow Up on the Conversation

Use your behaviors to show you were listening during the discussion. For instance, you might implement constructive feedback your employee provided. Or, you could talk about why you made another decision.

Do You Need Help with Hiring IT Employees?

Partner with RightStone for help with hiring qualified employees for your IT team. Reach out today.

Why Customer Service Still Matters in a Technical World

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In today’s world, it’s not uncommon for the entire customer journey to happen solely online. From discovery to purchase to service, there’s nothing you can’t do with just your website. They particularly love the option to connect via live chat, which has a customer service satisfaction rating of 73% compared to just 44% for chats over the phone.

As a business owner, you see these channels and you spot ways to save money and maybe win over a new customer demographic. But you shouldn’t be too quick to adopt a bot: human customer service is as important today as it is now.

Are you reconfiguring your customer service strategy? Read this before you go any further.

Only Humans Can Empathize Like Humans

No one has ever hung up the phone after chatting to an automated system and said, “I’m so glad I got to talk to that voice recording.” It’s never happened. You can only have neutral experiences with a non-human.

Whether you’re considering a chatbot or an automated phone system, it’s important to remember that there are many situations where these technologies are suitable. The nuances of language and tone can mean a lot for the customer experience, and your bot can’t pivot when a customer feels frustrated.

Yes, these technologies have a role to play in the way customers get service, but they need to be deployed carefully.

You’ll Miss Out on Valuable Insights

Automating your customer service seems like a win-win: it’s cheaper for you, frees up your team’s time, and helps customers get speedy results. While your program will offer you some helpful data, you’ll miss out on the kind of insights that only human-to-human communication can provide.

For example, data from a bot might tell you that a system isn’t working. But will it be able to tell you why? Only if it’s spoonfed the information by the customer and programmed to ask.

Technology Amplifies Customer Service

Ultimately, your technology won’t replace your customer service. Instead, new tech should amplify it. Technology provides new ways to provide superior service, but remember that the point of customer service isn’t busywork: it’s a huge part of your engagement strategy.

Go ahead and automate the rote tasks that eat up staff’s time, but make sure you keep a human at the other end of the line. Your customers will miss them when they’re gone!

At RightStone, we understand that the human connection is more important than ever, especially in our technology-focused world. Get in touch to learn how we can connect you with qualified workers, who provide the customer-focus you need to grow your business.