What is the importance of listening while speaking with clients in the context of insurance advisory?

Financial advisors who empathize with clients, better understand their clients There’s nothing quite like a dip in the stock market to make investors fear that their hopes, dreams, and expectations are in just as much jeopardy as their portfolio. When that fear sets in they’ll look to you, their financial advisor, to advise them in managing market volatility and ease their worries. These are the moments that separate the good advisors from the great advisors. Why? Because, these moments are pivotal opportunities to reiterate your true value to investors by listening to them and empathizing with them. These are the moments that turn new clients into lifelong clients simply because, during a time they felt uncertain, you made them feel heard and understood. And clients who feel understood by their advisor feel more confident in their advisor. 4 ways empathy helps advisors build trust with clients during market volatility An advisor who takes an empathetic approach in financial planning can see positive results in all seasons of their client relationships, but especially during seasons of market instability. However, for advisors who haven’t put empathy at the forefront of their client interactions, it’s never too late to start. Putting empathy in practice isn’t just for your investors’ benefit. As an advisor, employing empathy helps you in a variety of ways. 1. Empathy helps you anticipate client needs and behaviors. A sudden downturn in the market can send investors into a ...

“I’m constantly blown away at how appreciative people are when they get human replies. Years of uncaring or even hostile support experiences have set the bar low for their expectations that they get excited by genuine answers.” – Micah Bennett, Zapier What is the one skill that everybody in customer support must have? Ask this to anybody who’s been in customer service for a while and ‘empathy’ would be high up on the list. We’ve put together a short guide on the importance of empathy in customer service and tips to empathize with customers better. You can use the following links to navigate through the blog. What is empathy in customer service? Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s situation and seeing a problem from their point of view. In customer service, empathy is the ability to have a human interaction with a customer where you would intentionally put yourself in the customer’s shoes to understand their issue and find the best possible solution for your customers . Let’s look at an example of empathy in customer service for a better understanding. Example of empathy in customer service The above tweet has some powerful phrases that reveal empathy towards the customer (a.k.a empathy statements – we’ll get to that in a bit). The highlighted phrases in Slack’s reply indicate that the company has truly heard the customer and taken action on their query, rather than a robotic ‘thanks for...

Advisors should put him or herself in clients’ shoes, tuning into their wavelength and listening from their frame of reference. The advisor should explore core issues and hidden concerns, pausing to ask clarifying questions and repeat back important points. (Photo: Fotolia) Carver is also a licensed private pilot with a twin-engine Cessna. Several years ago, a crash landing left him with shattered ribs, collapsed lungs and a cracked larynx. Want to continue reading? Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader. INCLUDED IN A DIGITAL MEMBERSHIP: • All PropertyCasualty360.com news coverage, best practices, and in-depth analysis. • Educational webcasts, resources from industry leaders, and informative newsletters. • Other award-winning websites including BenefitsPRO.com and ThinkAdvisor.com. Register Now Already have an account? Don’t miss crucial news and insights you need to make informed decisions for your P&C insurance business. Join PropertyCasualty360.com now! • Unlimited access to PropertyCasualty360.com - your roadmap to thriving in a disrupted environment • Access to other award-winning ALM websites including BenefitsPRO.com, ThinkAdvisor.com and Law.com • Exclusive discounts on PropertyCasualty360, National Underwriter, Claims and ALM events Already have an account?

Sometimes the best thing you can say to a customer is less overall. In fact, improving your listening skills is one of the best things you can do to improve customer service. We can use the blanket term ‘active listening’ to describe the kinds of skills we’ll be discussing in this guide. Specifically, we’ll be asking: • What is active listening? • Why is active listening important for customer service? • How can I improve my active listening skills? What is active listening? Active listening is a technique that was first used in therapy, but the benefits transfer into a lot of different areas, including customer service. It refers to a pattern of listening that keeps you actively engaged with the person you’re speaking to. It’s all about being attentive, reflecting, and not being judgemental. Successful active listening makes the other person feel valued in their opinions, so it’s a great way to help customers feel heard and appreciated. Practically speaking, some common characteristics of active listening are: • Neutral and nonjudgmental attitude • Patience • Verbal and nonverbal feedback (smiling, eye contact, leaning in, mirroring) • Asking questions • Reflecting back on what is said • Asking for clarification • Summarising Think of yourself like a therapist talking to a client. You’re there as a sounding board, instead of interrupting with your own opinions, recommendations, and ideas. . Why is it important? Active listening builds a strong foundation for any meaningfu...

As any small business owner knows, retaining your clients and making them come back to you, again and again, is essential to the success of your small service business. Luckily, most clients are willing to give feedback on their experiences with your services, which can help you uncover ways to improve and avoid mistakes in the future. While this may seem intimidating at first, it’s much better than losing those valuable clients! In this blog post, I’ll go over some of the easiest ways to get more client feedback, along with ways you can use that feedback to improve your small service business. Why Customer Reviews Are Important Each client has an experience with your services, whether it be positive or negative. This experience is worth so much more than a payment you receive from a client because it provides valuable insight into how you can better serve your future clients. Uncovering what your clients think about your services will help ensure you retain them in the long run. Because at that point, word-of-mouth from a happy customer is all you’ll need. What Can Be Learned From Reviews When it comes to service-based companies, there’s no better way for a company to uncover what their clients think about their services than client reviews. Positive reviews are fantastic (and well worth sharing), but negative ones can provide valuable feedback on how you can improve. There might be major concerns that are preventing clients from coming back; if so, these reviews will hel...

The Listening Process Listening is a process and as such doesn’t have a defined start and finish. Like the communication process, listening has cognitive, behavioral, and relational elements and doesn’t unfold in a linear, step-by-step fashion. Models of processes are informative in that they help us visualize specific components, but keep in mind that they do not capture the speed, overlapping nature, or overall complexity of the actual process in action. The stages of the listening process are receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding. Receiving Before we can engage other steps in the listening process, we must take in stimuli through our senses. In any given communication encounter, it is likely that we will return to the receiving stage many times as we process incoming feedback and new messages. This part of the listening process is more physiological than other parts, which include cognitive and relational elements. We primarily take in information needed for listening through auditory and visual channels. Although we don’t often think about visual cues as a part of listening, they influence how we interpret messages. For example, seeing a person’s face when we hear their voice allows us to take in nonverbal cues from facial expressions and eye contact. The fact that these visual cues are missing in e-mail, text, and phone interactions presents some difficulties for reading contextual clues into meaning received through only auditory channels. Br...

Communication skills needed for patient-centered care include eliciting the patient's agenda with open-ended questions, especially early on; not interrupting the patient; and engaging in focused active listening. Understanding the patient's perspective of the illness and expressing empathy are key features of patient-centered communication. Understanding the patient's perspective entails exploring the patient's feelings, ideas, concerns, and experience regarding the impact of the illness, as well as what the patient expects from the physician. Empathy can be expressed by naming the feeling; communicating understanding, respect, and support; and exploring the patient's illness experience and emotions. Before revealing a new diagnosis, the patient's prior knowledge and preferences for the depth of information desired should be assessed. After disclosing a diagnosis, physicians should explore the patient's emotional response. Shared decision making empowers patients by inviting them to consider the pros and cons of different treatment options, including no treatment. Instead of overwhelming the patient with medical information, small chunks of data should be provided using repeated cycles of the “ask-tell-ask” approach. Training programs on patient-centered communication for health care professionals can improve communication skills. Clinical recommendation Evidence rating References Comments Physicians should avoid interrupting the patient early in the interview. B Observati...

Summary. What makes a good listener? Most people think is comes down to three components: not interrupting the speaker, following along with facial expressions, and being able to repeat back almost verbatim what the speaker has just said. According to research from Zenger and Folkman, however, we’re doing it all wrong. Instead of thinking of a good listener as a sponge —absorbing everything but providing little feedback — a skilled listener should be thought of as a trampoline who amplifies and supports a speaker’s thoughts by providing constructive feedback. Engaging in a two-way conversation is essential, according to data, and Zenger and Folkman define six levels of listening, all meant to help listeners develop this skill. Chances are you think you’re a good listener. People’s appraisal of their listening ability is much like In our experience, most people think good listening comes down to doing three things: • Not talking when others are speaking • Letting others know you’re listening through facial expressions and verbal sounds (“Mmm-hmm”) • Being able to repeat what others have said, practically word-for-word In fact, much management advice on listening suggests doing these very things – encouraging listeners to remain quiet, nod and “mm-hmm” encouragingly, and then repeat back to the talker something like, “So, let me make sure I understand. What you’re saying is…” However, recent research that we conducted suggests that these behaviors fall far short of describin...