Great Customer Service on the Telephone

CHAPTER 2

THE CHALLENGE OF TELEPHONE COMMUNICATION

One of the most important aspects of your day-to-day interactions with customers and coworkers, friends and family, is your nonverbal communication—the things you don’t say. The way you stand or move, the clothes you wear, the gestures you make, everything that you don’t say sends a far stronger message than the actual words you use and even the way you use those words.

Given the subtlety and importance of nonverbal communication, it’s a wonder we can communicate over the telephone at all! And yet, for most businesses the telephone is a major lifeline—often the number one medium of communication. The telephone compresses time and space. It allows you to communicate over long distances not possible ...