Communicating with your partner

Matrix Key - Relationships - Significant Other 

Communication



What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing, but the give-and-take that made you both match? - Jodi Picoult

Communication is key to any relationship, but it has special significance in your relationship with your significant other.  When you and your partner share well developed communication skills, you operate as a team, and can handle any situation.  When these skills are not developed, even the most innocent remark can be taken out of context and grow into a horrendous fight.  In fact, poor communication skills are a clear symptom of a troubled relationship.

Fortunately, with a little time and attention, good communication skills are surprisingly easy to develop.  Four keys to healthy communication are:

1. Listening - pause during your conversation to make sure you correctly understand what your partner is sharing.
2. Verbalizing - put words with your feelings.
3. Non-verbal cues - watch for body language that matches or differs from the spoken words.
4. Checking In - set aside time on a regular basis for a general review of your relationship.  

The next time you feel completely misunderstood, or find yourself locked in an argument over something inconsequential, stop and look at how you are communicating. Find a way to bring kindness, respect and courtesy back into the discussion.  You will be glad you did.

Customer Service - Do You Hear What I Hear?

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” Roger Staubach, Legendary Hall of Fame Quarterback

The past several days I have been having a lot of trouble with my Hotmail account. I can't get in to read my email. I’ve tried to communicate with the good people at Hotmail to no avail. I’ve also been monitoring the rising frustration of other Hotmail customers who have been posting their issues on forums.

It struck me that we should talk about good customer service. What makes you feel like you have received good customer service? And what does that mean to you when you are making buying decisions?

At Possibilities Unlimited, we coach our clients to make their customers feel heard. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? When things go wrong, we all want to feel like someone is in our corner, that they’ve heard our question or concern, and are doing everything they can to fix it.

The mere fact of acknowledging a customer’s concern goes a long way to keeping him happy. Most people understand that things go wrong from time to time, and they can usually forgive an honest mistake when the company admits what they did wrong and moves swiftly to correct the error.

What if the opposite is true? What if the company makes excuses or shifts the blame? What if they don’t respond to customer questions?

When people don’t feel heard, they start talking louder. If you ask your child to clean his room and he doesn’t respond, you raise your voice. Same thing happens in customer service. If people don’t get answers, they raise their voices, either by making additional demands or threatening to quit the service.

In Hotmail’s case, you can almost hear the collective screams of many people who have been locked out of their email accounts for days without answers. Hotmail’s repetitive response goes something like this:

“We have been doing maintenance on the Hotmail system. You should not experience outages for more than four hours. Try again later.”

They don’t address the problem head on, and they seemingly aren’t listening to people who have been locked out for far longer than four hours. Many people are posting that they have already gotten Gmail accounts and dumped the Hotmail service.

Could this have been avoided if Hotmail had posted a general message like this?

“We know you must be very frustrated that you can’t access your email. It’s a big problem, and we don’t have it figured out yet. Rest assured that we have brought in extra help and are getting to the bottom of the issue as fast as we can. We will post updates every hour on our progress.”

We can all learn a lot about customer service from situations like this one. Just remember that honesty and a listening ear can be a winning formula when the unexpected happens.

Are you ready to win?