Building Client Relationships with Effective Communication

Frontline professionals that deal with a customer base on a daily basis play one of the most significant roles in any organizations.

At the end of the day your main priority is your customer’s satisfaction. Your frontline staff is probably well-trained in areas such as customer consulting, product/service maintenance, and even sometimes disaster management. The question is: Are they excellent communicators?

The real break down in many organizations is the communication style gap between the frontline professional and the customer.

Here is an example:

Customer A and Customer B are looking to roll out two new programs and want information on how to do this.

Customer A may be a direct, bottom line, results oriented person that doesn’t have time to focus on non-essentials or details.  They just want to know what a high level overview will be, and how it will impact his/her business.

Customer B may be a precise, exact, analytical, and systematic person. They may want to know every detail that will go into rolling out this new program step by step, so every bit of information is necessary.

Miscommunication happens when the frontline representative fails to understand that Customer A and Customer B want totally separate things even though the surface need is the same.  The frontline representative must be able to have two totally different conversations about the same process.

Bottom line, if your frontline staff does not have the tools to quickly adapt to a client’s communication style, this may result in lost up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Worse yet, It might even contribute to the loss of that client.

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