Customer Relations
Talking Less Leads to
Higher Revenue Per Call Roger Daviston
The more you talk, the more likely you are to get
yourself into trouble. If you are wise you will keep
quiet and measure your words very carefully.
This is a life principle that applies to all of us in all of
our relationships.
If you just keep your mouth shut, you are more likely
to stay out of trouble. This is the sensible thing to do,
most of the time. Opening your mouth can ruin everything
if you are not careful. A person can seem really
wise until you hear him open his mouth.
On the other hand, we do have to talk, don’t we? We
can’t be quiet all our lives. Life does require communication
with others through the spoken word. I have always
said that technicians who become good communicators
have higher tickets. They have to get their tunnel vision
off of the problem and look at the customer.
However, communication is not about many words;
it is about measured and concise words. A truly wise
person talks less and uses few words. Even as he talks
he is quick to listen, slow to speak and is calm and even
tempered under stress. Think before you speak because
you can’t stop the words once they are spoken. The
damage is already done. Don’t be the person who has
no interest in understanding and only wants to hear his
own opinion.
The Service Call Blueprint: Field Tested Strategies For
Higher Revenue is a collection of a few simple boundaries
for technicians to execute that produces better
results. The central idea is to show options for repair
President
The Daviston Group
and put the weight of the responsibility for choosing the
repair on the customer where it belongs and not on the
technician.
There are two simple boundaries: number one is the
technician must learn to let go of the position of choice
for the customer and respect this boundary; number
two is that the technician must take ownership of the
presentation process and show options for repair.
When talking, be clear, concise and communicate the
why behind the what. Our clients invest in the why, not
the what.
So how do you teach a technician to
measure his words and be concise? You
write a script and expect him to learn
it word for word. Ugh! I also once felt
this way and discovered that I was
wrong because very few technicians
could come up with their own words.
They would ramble and talk too much
out of their own anxiety. The more they
would talk the more the customers eyes
would glaze over and the technicians
would lose them.
I learned that teaching only theory
was not working for most of my clients,
so I had to write scripts. However, I
used to believe that expecting a person
to execute a script was taking away his
freedom to be himself. This is not true.
While words are important, the person
can still express them as himself. The
words are only 7% of the process.
Words attempt to convey ideas and thoughts from one
person to another. However, words do not give justice
to the speed of thought. The entirety of what you are
attempting to convey is also expressed through physiology,
otherwise known as body language. Remember
the idiom “if looks could kill?” Researchers say that our
physiology communicates about 53% of what we want to
communicate.
Researchers also say that tempo and tone of voice
communicate the other 40% of what is intended. So if a
technician uses my words, there is still 93% of himself
he can express. Additionally, if a group of technicians
do not like my words, we can come up with other words
that accomplish the same goals. The English language
has many synonyms.
Let’s talk more about what word for word means.
There is a funny episode of the TV show Seinfeld in
which Kramer goes into a bank that has a policy to give
customers $100 if they are not greeted with a “hello.”
18 ICM/November/December 2017