Listening With Your Eyes

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Communication is a staple component of customer service and the eyes are a necessary tool for translating and analyzing body language signals that enhance communication in face to face conversations. Listening with your eyes means actively observing the body signals and non-verbal behavior of the speaker as he/she talks to you.

This will entail maintaining eye contact and paying careful attention to the message being transmitted both by words and body signals. For instance – you read the person’s lips, posture, gestures, and demeanor, then use the information to enrich your understanding of the message.

listening with your eyes
Image: openaccess.bpo

Listening with your eyes improves the amount & duration of eye contact which in itself has a number of benefits – People who make higher levels of eye contact with others are perceived as being;

  • More qualified, skilled, competent, and valuable
  • More trustworthy, honest, and reliable
  • More confident and emotionally stable
  • More dominant and powerful
  • More warm and personable
  • More attractive and likeable

Listening with your eyes makes you give focused attention to the speaker, which subconsciously says to the person that they are important and you value what they have to say. This is especially important in customer service, where company reps are required to treat the customer as King.

You wouldn’t be looking into phone or computer or glancing sideways if you had 5 minutes with someone important, would you?

This means your customers, colleagues, and peers are likely to perceive you in a more positive light when you begin to listen – not just with your ears, but with your eyes as well.

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But like every skill, the way to develop it is to practice constantly and consistently. You will feel more confident in your daily conversation with others if you could better understand what they might be thinking, hiding from you or how comfortable they are.

How Do I Practice?

One way to practice listening with your eyes is to watch an episode of your favorite television show on mute and then try to make head & tail of the program by reading lips, watching facial expressions, body language, and all the other clues you can spot. muteEliminating the sound forces you to rely only on your eyes to understand what’s happening in the program. With practice, you’ll notice that you become more adept at interpreting nonverbal signals in your daily interactions with others as well.

Although you won’t be able to read minds or accurately tell exactly what someone is feeling or thinking at any point in time, listening with your eyes will enrich and enhance your understanding of what other people are saying (and not saying) to you.

A little girl came home from school with a drawing she’d made in class. She danced into the kitchen, where her mother was preparing dinner.
“Mom, guess what?” she squealed, waving the drawing.
Her mom never looked up.
“What?” she said, tending to the pots.
“Guess what?” the child repeated, waving the drawing.
“What?” the mother said, tending to the plates.
“Mom, you’re not listening.”
“Sweetie, yes I am.”
“Mom,” the child said, “you’re not listening with your eyes.“

– Mitch Albom

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So why not give it a try? Whenever you have your next customer (or anyone) in front of you, stop what you are doing. Don’t look into your phone, or at your computer. Just stop everything and give full attention to the person.

Kelechi Okeke
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