The tale (tail?) of Air Canada

But wait for it … the first leg of my trip is with (are you ready) – Air Canada!!  I have been passed from pillar to post, from one customer relations rep to another – all the time feeling totally powerless to the “flying gods.”

Knowing there was a strike coming on Wednesday (Tuesday midnight), I knew my goal – get someone – anyone to help me get to Australia.

I’ve spent the last 3 days on the phone with Air Canada, Air New Zealand and various customer reps with Red Tag Vacations.  I’ve experienced empathy, coldness, irritation and rudeness. I have worked to be polite in all my dealings with each person. I do understand that these people are not the problem.

One of my creative solutions was to get myself to San Fran on my own dime and make the second leg of the flight. BUT – that was not possible (according to Air New Zealand). Air NZ wanted to charge extra fees and penalties for me to solve my own problem. More on that later.

So what have I learned? (far from an exhaustive list)

1. Listen carefully to your customer: Listen closely to what your customer is saying. If they are having difficulty expressing what they want/need, help them to articulate it. When they are clear about what they want; you can serve them more effectively
2. Listen with empathy: If the particular problem is one that you cannot solve, empathize with the difficult situation someone is in. For example, when I told my story to Air Canada, the customer rep was cold and uncaring. Saying he was sorry for my difficulty would not have hurt him – in fact it might have helped him. Another customer rep empathized and my frustration level reduced because even if they were not solving my problem, they were relating to me as a human. I was not merely a financial transaction to him/her.
3. Try to problem solve creatively: Work with your customer/client to find a solution to their problem.
4. Be authentic: Don’t pay lip service to people. If you can’t/won’t help them, don’t pretend that you are. You will get found out eventually and your reputation will be damaged. Some social media savvy people can do some damage to your reputation (remember the guitar story?).
5. Make your policies flexible: I suggested to Air New Zealand that I would get to my first destination (San Fran) on my own dime. They blew me away when they said that I had to use my ticket from the first point of departure or I would be considered a “no show”.  Classic inflexibility.

The Air Canada strike has emphasized a lesson that we all learned a long time ago and that is …

Put your customer first.

Your customers have many places to go to buy products or services similar to yours. If you don’t meet their expectations or exceed them: believe me they will look somewhere else!

[Update] I’d just like to give online kudos to Red Tag Vacations. From the President (who did give me a personal call and asked staff to find a solution) to the manager of online bookings (Gina) to a customer rep (Christina) who both called me to let me know that the strike was averted. These people and their actions stand out above all the other customer reps because they cared enough to inform me that the strike was over. No one else did that and believe me, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the last 3 days.

Were you affected by the Air Canada strike or some other service disruption?  What did you learn about customer relations as a result?

Photo Credit

In my last post, I talked a bit about why listening can be difficult – especially when the conversation is a tough one; the stakes are high; we are feeling offended or we feel accused of something.  This time, I want to talk a bit about some things we can be aware of or we can do, that can help us to listen better.

Five Tips for Better Listening

1. Recognize that “I’ve been triggered” feeling. When you are feeling better (not triggered, that is), see if you can unpack the trigger and the feeling either by yourself or with the person that you were triggered with (make sure you feel emotionally safe). Ask yourself, “what was it about what that person said or did or emoted that made me react like that? Be gentle on yourself, it may take some time to get there.
2. Suspend your agenda. Suspending your agenda means inviting the other person to say more about what they are thinking or feeling so that you can gain a fuller understanding of what they are trying to communicate. This is hard because we want to be heard – we all want to say our part.
3. Don’t assume that you know what is coming next!  That isn’t listening – that is prediction and it will get you into difficulties.
4. Put aside your judgments of the person who is speaking. Don’t assume that they don’t have something valuable to say.
5. If someone says something that feels critical to you –remind yourself that underneath your feelings are some negative thoughts about criticism. Try to remind yourself that uncomfortable but accurate evaluation is an opportunity to grow.

We all need help and practice to improve our listening ability.  Are there other techniques that you use to help yourself stay focused on listening?

Why is “listening” so hard in difficult conversations?

You know the difficult conversations that I’m talking about… the ones where you are confronted about your choices or your behaviour or something you said. Or the conversations where you feel criticized and put down.

There are many reasons why we won’t (or is it that can’t?) listen – especially in difficult conversations.

• We are emotionally triggered by someone’s mannerisms, choice of words, voice or tone. Because we are triggered (and usually feeling pretty defensive), it becomes really hard to “listen” – to receive the communication from the other person.
• We have an agenda of what we want to communicate in the conversation. We have a point to make, a lesson to teach or a comment that will “change the other person’s perspective” and we can’t wait to get it out!
• We think that we already know what the other person is going to say. How many times have you noticed that people don’t listen because they already assume that they know what you are going to say?
• Listening is difficult when the speaker has low credibility in our eyes.
• Our feelings get in the way of listening: when someone points out a mistake, they never say we are incompetent or stupid, but we sure can feel like that is the message…

Listening is an art. But listening can also be painful. I’ve shared a few examples of when we find it hard to listen and hear but I am sure that there are many more.  Now it is your turn… when do you find it difficult to listen or hear people?

Next time, I would like to talk about how we can improve our ability to listen. Stay tuned…

Can you remember a difficult conversation that you had recently? What made the conversation difficult? Were you happy with the outcome? How about the person that you had the difficult conversation with – were they satisfied with the conversation?

Intimate conversations or conversations that revolve around disagreement are difficult.  Are there some conversations in particular that are difficult for you? I recently asked a group of people (okay, it was a seminar on Making Difficult Conversations Easier) and here are some of the conversations that they found difficult to engage in:

•   Money conversations – (asking for a raise, asking for money back)
•   Delivering bad/hard messages (you’re fired)
•   Being vulnerable about my feelings (I love you)
•   Confronting behaviours
   

What makes these conversations difficult? 

Sometimes we don’t know the outcome… usually difficult conversations have some risk involved with them.

Sometimes we actually know the outcome and we worry about how we might be perceived by the person that we are having the conversation with. Other times, the stakes are high; we might be misunderstood and we may not achieve the outcome that we want or envision.

Our difficult conversations can hurt the people we care about. We worry that our anger will get the better of us. We might make the situation worse. Or there might be a backlash – we might get punished for speaking out.

To Have or Not to Have

It’s hard to decide whether to have a difficult conversation or not. If you don’t you might feel taken advantage of. You might harbour lingering negative feelings about someone. But if you do have the conversation… things might get worse. In fact, you may already have tried and you have suffered some of these consequences:

•   You were verbally attacked and you didn’t know what to do next
•   You were rejected and (as my father used to say) you were “put in the deep freeze for your trouble”
•   The relationship deteriorated

Do you avoid difficult conversations?

Sometimes when you suffer the negative outcomes of failed conversations, you avoid having them in the future. How do you avoid conversations?

1. Did you decide that you will never initiate a difficult conversation again? For some of us, certain conversations are so threatening that we will continually overlook an issue or leave the relationship rather than engage. The problem with this kind of avoidance is that trust cannot be built in the relationship nor can the relationship grow or develop.
2. Did you take some indirect action without having a conversation? Some times we decide that we will not discuss an issue or behaviour but we will stay on the alert for repeats of behaviours that have offended us. We no longer trust the other person and will be wary of the other’s motives and intentions. While we have managed to avoid the danger and risk of having the conversation, we destroy the fabric of trust in the relationship.
3.  Were you willing to start the difficult conversation but you gave in when the going got rough (your thinking is “okay, you are so upset that we will do it your way”). In this scenario we value peace more than valuing our own boundaries. We fear losing the connection with our friend/lover/partner/child so we give in.

Engaging in difficult conversations

Just as we can avoid difficult conversations in a variety of ways, we can engage in them in just as many ways. We can:

1. Approach the conversation with an “I will win and you will lose” attitude. I am right and you are wrong. With this stance, the issue is more important than the relationship and a successful outcome for both people is unlikely.
2. Approach the conversation with an attitude that I want to hear what you have to say. Although this is a difficult conversation, I will engage in the discussion because I care about you, I care about the issue, I care about the relationship. With this attitude, there is a great possibility of being able to navigate through the issue and come out the other side with a stronger bond between us.

Where are you on the difficult conversation spectrum? Do you avoid? How do you avoid? Do you engage in them? And what stance do you assume when you do engage…  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.