Effective Communication Skills

Elements of Communication

There are 3 basic elements to communication - Body Language, Tone, and Words. See the pie chart below for how these elements are distributed as a percentage of how we normally communicate.

So this shows us that when we are face to face, we have the power of all three communication tools – however, when we use the phone we lose body language, which accounts for just over half of our capacity to communicate to the best of our ability.

So we should be mindful of this model when establishing a rapport over the phone, along with bearing in mind the senses which will be most relied upon and used by the customer (-i.e. ears and mouth).

The key challenge when communicating with customers over the phone is that rapport-building options become limited because non-verbal messages are not available to you.

Instead, you have to rely on the spoken word, tone and inflection to convey warmth, care and support - so just under 50% of the communication skills normally available to you.