Good Conversation: Empower Your Business

A good conversation is the best way to create a loyal customer, an engaged employee, and overall, a great company. Having a good conversation leaves people feeling satisfied and confident. It boosts self-esteem and has been likened to the same high experienced when eating a favorite food or even having sex.

What makes a good conversation?

A good conversation isn’t just about the words that are said. It’s about how things are said. It’s about body language and facial expressions. Good conversations communicate so much more than just words. More than that, a good conversation can leave us delighted!

Next time you see two people talking, take a moment to look at them properly. How are they interacting? How does one react to the other? What nuances can you pick up on without even hearing what they’re saying? A good communicator knows that a good conversation is an artful balancing act between active listening and constructive speaking.

Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry

A good conversation is made up of a few straightforward elements:

Empathic and Active listening (constructive responsiveness): don’t just nod your head, but understand and participate in the conversation, this is about making others feel interesting and important.
Honesty: being truly invested in a conversation is reflected by whether you are showing genuine interest.

The art of carrying a good conversation is a valuable tool when it comes to a company as well. It isn’t just about creating a strong rapport between a salesperson and a customer in order to close a sale either. It’s also about encouraging communication between team members and the company and their employees.

Good communication, internally and externally, leads to a great experience for everyone.

Having a Good Conversation inside a Company

For an employee, being able to have a good conversation with a manager is vital to their job satisfaction and, as a result, their performance. A good conversation allows an employee to express their concerns, needs/desires and suggestions in such a way that managers can understand them and meet them. Similarly, the manager can give voice to their own requirements and opinions, representing the company in this relationship. This two way street provides both parties with the opportunity to actively listen to each other as well as offering useful solutions for any problems. The aim of any good conversation is to leave all parties feeling validated and satisfied that they’ve both been heard and had their requirements met.

The result is a strong relationship between the employees and the company. The open line of communication lets the company empower their entire staff, turning them into engaged employees. Engaged employees are motivated to drive sales because they believe in the cause, thus increasing the bottom line and customer satisfaction. All because the company knows how to have a good conversation.

Encouraging this ongoing communication has internal effects. Employees who communicate with the company are more likely to connect with coworkers as well. This improves internal efficiency! Being a good communicator allows team members to get ahead of any issues and this strengthens the company as a whole.

Building Customer Loyalty through Good Conversation

As human beings, we like to know our needs are heard and met. As customers, this is amplified through expectation. When we got to business, we expect to receive the quality and service that was promised. We want our choices to be validated.

Customers are companies’ most valuable assets. We all accept that without customers, companies can’t do business and cease to exist. That’s just a simple fact, and until someone discovers how to create a business completely non-reliant on customers and breaks economics as we know it, that’s the way it’s going to be.

As a result, learning how to have a good conversation with a prospective customer is a solid way of creating a lasting relationship with that customer. Even if a sale isn’t made in the first meeting, the foundation for an ongoing relationship has been made upon which to generate future sales.

“Make a customer, not a sale,” Katherine Barchetti said. And she was right. A loyal customer is a returning customer. They’ll advocate your brand and will keep buying your product, simply because they trust you.

So, good conversations…what do we think?

Great customer service experience comes from the ability to connect through good conversation. If we need to improve the way our companies
communicate with our employees and our customers, then it’s time to put some effort into mastering the art of having a great conversation.