“Your tone of voice often says more what is in your mind than your words do.” ~ Napoleon Hill
Working with the public on a daily basis we need to remember that many times what our clients/customers hear sounds much different from what we think. There are times when we encounter our customers that we are also in the middle of dealing with other routine daily tasks or maybe even an urgent issue and instead of our customer/client being our first priority we sound to them like they are a bother to us, and we may not even realize it. We might even sound worse, like we really do not want to be bothered with them and how do you think that makes them feel? Let me relate to you a situation that happened today. Our accountant had made an appointment a month ago to come to our office to go through the accounting program and make sure that he had all of the up-to-date information that he would need come year-end. He had asked that I have certain bills and statements from the beginning of the ready for his auditing and that he would only need an hour or so to do this. When he entered my office he seemed to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder and his statements to me were very short and sharp. My first thought was maybe he wasn’t having a good day, but then he proceeded to be more harsh and telling me that it appeared that “I” must be doing something wrong because certain accounts didn’t match up. I let him know nicely that I had not changed anything at all and was not sure what he was talking about. A few hours later and many “unnecessary tongue spankings” he realized that he did not make several “normal” adjustments last year and laughed “that was part of the problem, so things are not as bad as I thought.” I just stared at him, he had been talking down to me telling me telling me that I must have been doing things wrong and much more, just to find out that “he” forgot to make some changes last year.” I was not only upset, but was totally rattled by the tone of voice he kept using with me as if I were a naughty child and was doing things wrong. When I did tell him that I didn’t know how to do one of the things he showed me, he just chuckled and said “oh I know that you have been told about this before, you just didn’t do it.” I felt like my Dad was in the room scolding me! It was really amazing to me that he felt that by using a tone of voice that was belittling, degrading, that I would want to keep him as our accountant. We should pay to be treated this way? I don’t think so. This was not just a one time bad encounter, there have been several, but this will be the last. I am not sure what the issue is with this person, but I do know that if we are going to be paying top dollar for services, we should be treated kindly and appropriately. The one good thing that came out of this experience was the reminder to me to never allow our clients to be on the receiving end of a conversation or encounter with anyone who works for our business where they are treated with a tone of voice that is less than honoring and respectful, which is what they deserve. Ask yourself “how do I sound to my customers?”
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