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The French Open and Customer Service Training

Guest post by: Ben Nash

Article Overview: Did you know that the word discussion comes from the Latin root “dis,” which means “apart,” and “quatere,” which means “to shake,” so the word discussion literally means: “to shake apart.” This, of course, is what we do to each other when we are having heated discussions! The word dialog, on the other hand, comes from the Greek root “dia,” which means “across,” and “legein,” which means to “speak” – literally “to speak across” (i.e. – to engage someone in a conversation by reaching across to them).

The French Open and Customer Service Training

Did you know that the word discussion comes from the Latin root “dis,” which means “apart,” and “quatere,” which means “to shake,” so the word discussion literally means: “to shake apart.” This, of course, is what we do to each other when we are having heated discussions! The word dialog, on the other hand, comes from the Greek root “dia,” which means “across,” and “legein,” which means to “speak” – literally “to speak across” (i.e. – to engage someone in a conversation by reaching across to them).

The point (trust us, there is a point!) is that in a customer service sense, people should have a dialog with their customers rather than a discussion. In modern usage dialog means that you are really trying to understand the other persons point of view and “get inside their head,” while discussion is more like playing tennis—you are just waiting for them to hit the ball to you so you can hit it right back to them.

So can you train customer service staff to use dialog skills when dealing with customers? Yes you can! A major part of the training is self awareness that the purpose of customer service is to see things from the customer’s perspective—not to be ready to return their tennis ball with a killer backhand as if you were in the French Open!

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Article Tags: customer service training, employee training, french open, human resources, organization development, organizational development



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