Customer Service Week Activities

Activity:

Active Listening Challenge

Materials:
Conversation Guides

Pads

Pens

Notes:
Active listening is a way of listening and responding that improves mutual understanding. Two of the most important techniques of active listening are giving visual and/or verbal clues that you are fully engaged in the conversation (“Yes,” “I see,” “Em Hmm”) and summarizing what the speaker has said. This technique has the added benefit of aiding the listener’s recall. This exercise will prove that these techniques work, even to a real doubter.

Directions:
Divide your group into teams of four to five. Have each team arrange their chairs in a circle.

Passive listening. Give one person the Conversation Guides. Ask her to read the first quote to the person on her right. That person then whispers the quote to the person on her right and so on until the last person has received the message. The final person to receive the message writes it on a blank sheet of paper.

When the teams are finished, ask the last person to receive the message to read what she heard. Then ask the person who went first to read the original message to the team. Oops, that’s not quite right!

Active listening. Next, explain that you will try again with a new quote. This time teammates should practice their active listening skills and repeat the quote back to the speaker. The speaker may correct the listener to ensure that the message is correctly received. Now, when teams compare the final message to the original message it should be exactly the same, or very close.

Discussion:
Take a few moments to discuss the importance of active listening in this exercise and ask participants for examples of how these principles apply to their daily interactions with customers. For example:
How does this activity relate to our daily work with customers?

How can we use active listening to improve customer service?

Can anyone share an example of time when a misunderstanding could have been avoided if you had confirmed what the customer said. (Be prepared to share an example from your own experience, if necessary.)

Click here to print Conversation Guides.

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