What are effective strategies for actively listening to customers with competing priorities?

1 Why active listening matters

Active listening is more than just hearing what your customers say. It involves paying attention, showing interest, asking questions, reflecting, and summarizing what you hear. Active listening can help you build rapport, trust, and credibility with your customers, and avoid misunderstandings and conflicts. It can also help you identify opportunities, risks, and gaps, and provide solutions that meet your customers' requirements and expectations.

2 How to prepare for active listening

Before engaging in active listening with your customers, it's important to prepare yourself mentally and physically. To do so, you should set a clear purpose and agenda for the conversation, do some research on your customer's background and context, choose a suitable time and place for the conversation, and be open-minded and respectful. Additionally, make sure to avoid distractions, interruptions, and noise. By doing this, you can better understand their pain points, goals, and preferences while also acknowledging their perspectives and emotions.

3 How to practice active listening

During the conversation, practicing active listening skills is essential to demonstrate your interest, understanding, and empathy. Make eye contact, nod, smile, and use appropriate expressions and gestures to show your attention. Ask open-ended, probing, and clarifying questions to explore customers' needs, expectations, and challenges. Avoid leading or loaded questions that may limit their responses. Reflect and paraphrase what customers say to confirm comprehension and show respect. Summarize and synthesize key points and themes of the conversation. Provide feedback and suggestions that align with customers' priorities and organization's goals. With these active listening skills, you can appreciate input, understand situations, and help customers in meaningful ways.

4 How to deal with competing priorities

In situations where customers have competing or conflicting priorities, it can be difficult for you to listen effectively and provide solutions. To deal with this, you need to prioritize and categorize their needs and expectations using criteria such as urgency, importance, feasibility, and impact. Negotiating and compromising with customers is also important; explain the benefits and trade-offs of different options and seek their input on the best solution. Additionally, managing and communicating expectations is key; set realistic goals and timelines, and keep customers informed of the progress and challenges. Lastly, don't forget to seek and leverage support from other stakeholders like your team or partners who can help address customers' competing priorities.

5 How to improve your active listening skills

Active listening is a skill that can be improved with practice and feedback. To do this, seek feedback from customers and other stakeholders about their experience in conversations with you. Reflect on what worked well and what didn't, and learn from other successful business relationship managers. Consider enrolling in courses, workshops, or mentoring programs to further develop your active listening skills. These strategies can help you understand and align with your customers while delivering value to them and your organization.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?