Return to the ongoing case you selected. This will be either your current employer, a specific organization you want to work in, or one of the two hypothetical organizations described in Chapter 1: Independent Auto Sales and Service (IAS) or Network Nutrition Distributors (NND). Now consider the following questions as you develop a customer service strategy:
Strategy Planning Questions
1. Write a plan for enhancing your listening effectiveness while working in this organization. Include specific actions you could take. Build your plan around questions such as these: 1. What personal behaviors can you change to be a better listener? Be specific (and remember our definition of "behaviors" from Chapter 2).
2. How might you (as a leader or as a peer) encourage others to also improve listening skills?
3. Describe any environmental factors in your organization that may be making listening more difficult. Examples might be related to the physical facilities, available communication channels, geographic separation, and so on. How could you improve these?
4. What distracters regularly exist in the organization that hurt listening? How might you deal with these?
5. Does the organization seem to have problems with gatekeeping? If so, what are some specific escalation policies that could be clarified and taught to all employees? Write a list of situations that should require attention from supervisors or managers/leaders.