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9 Customers Need To Feel Heard and Understood Before Anything Else

Name: 9 Customers Need To Feel Heard and Understood Before Anything Else
Uploaded: 2023-08-18T20:55:19+00:00
Duration: 1 min 4 s
Channel: Bob London
Description: In this excerpt, Bob London emphasizes that the most important action when a customer encounters a problem is to make them feel heard and understood…

18 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, Bob London emphasizes that the most important action when a customer encounters a problem is to make them feel heard and understood before attempting any solution. He shares an anecdote about a saying that reframes customer complaints as signs of difficulty rather than malice, and he draws a parallel to the CANDOR framework used in healthcare, where clinicians acknowledge errors and express empathy. London explains that this approach not only dramatically improves the customer's emotional experience but also reduces long‑term legal and financial costs for the organization. The core message is that genuine empathy is a strategic lever for better customer outcomes and lower escalation.

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I think this point about helping customers feel heard and understood is gigantic. It's especially true when they're having a problem. Someone said to me last year, she read somewhere, "Your kids aren't giving you a hard time, they're having a hard time." She and I related that back to customers. You know, they're not being evil, they're just being honest, you know, and having a problem. I would ask you to think about when something goes wrong, when wires get crossed, what is the first thing that needs to happen? You need to feel understood and heard before anything else happens. In a session I did last week, one of the folks told me, about a program or a framework called CANDOR. They have proven that when medical professionals actually say, I know something went wrong, and empathize rather than deny and defend, you know, for legal reasons, not only does the patient feel 1,000 times better, but the long-term legal costs go down because people don't feel this sense of, oh, the hospital is retreating behind their barriers and I have to retreat behind my barriers and now we're going to fight it out. No, they feel like, okay, well, they started off by respecting what happened and now I feel good about, you know, resolving it. So it's the same with Customers.