we listen at five different and distinct levels how you listen to your end users and customers will

have a significant impact on your success in that of the overall IT support team or your organization
as important as how you actually listen is how you are perceived to listen here are the five levels of
listening the lowest level of listening is called ignoring not listening at all if you're distracted by
anything while talking to a user they can get the impression that you're ignoring them for example
while the user is speaking you start a conversation or interject a comment with another IT support
tech or customer service rep you're ignoring your user or your customer pretend listening is most
easily explained in the face-to-face conversation you're talking to the other person and they have
that back packing in Brazil look in their eyes on the phone it happens when you say things like I see
and ok while working on an unrelated email or playing a computer game people can tell you're
distracted next is selective listening during selective listening we pay attention to the speaker as long
as they're talking about things we like or agree with if they move on to other things we slip down to
pretend listening or ignore them altogether attentive listening is the next level and that occurs when
we carefully listen to the other person but while they're speaking we're deciding whether we agree
or disagree determining whether they are right or wrong at all four of these levels it should be
evident that we're listening to our own perspective and in most cases with the intent to respond
from our experience the fifth level of listening is empathic listening to be successful in providing IT
support or customer service to end-users and customers you must teach yourself to treat every call
or visit as though this is the first time you've ever heard this problem even though you may have
heard it many times before discipline yourself to see it through the eyes of the user or the customer
this is called empathic listening and empathic listening is the highest level of listening and the
hardest to accomplish to achieve empathic listening slow down be patient talk less and listen more
repeat back what was said to ensure that you don't overlook anything at the end of the call or visit
do a short recap of what you've discussed what approach you're suggesting and any follow-up on
your part of the users part that is needed be specific about how you will follow up what you will do
and what he or she can expect and when it will happen a great way to evaluate whether you're
doing empathic listening or not is to ask yourself where is your focus here's how you do it as you
think about the five levels of listening think about the fact that the first four levels are self focused
while the fifth level empathic listening is focused on the user or the customer when your focus is
completely on the user and not on yourself your level of service will be much higher

you