Our Customer Service Policy (Oh No!)
Should your business’s policies always be applied, in all cases, for all customers? Only company leadership can decide that. The most important thing when making business decisions is putting yourself in the customer’s position. Determine if these policieswill invite people to return, buy more, and become fans; or drive customers away to seek other providers. […]
Avoid the Murphy’s Law of Email – Improve Engagement
When a potential customer sends an email, will your response automatically start a dialogue? Avoid the Murphy’s Law of email. Keep your communication clear.
Carl Palmer on Listening
The Quieter You Are, the More You Will Hear Carl Palmer is one of the most respected rock drummers to emerge from Great Britain in the 1960s. He is a veteran of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Asia. Listening is what the world is all about. We listen to people cry out for help, to […]
Bullying and Microaggressions in the Workplace
Workplace bullying and microaggressions are serious issues that can significantly impact employees’ well-being and productivity. Bullying involves repeated, harmful mistreatment of individuals, characterized by threatening, humiliating, or intimidating behavior, work interference or sabotage, and verbal abuse. Addressing these behaviors is essential for creating a healthy, respectful, and inclusive work environment. Today we are going to […]
What’s the Purpose of Eye Contact?
What are your eyes doing during a presentation, or even during a conversation? Think about it.
Are they looking down at your hands or your notes?
Do they gaze out the window or over the heads of the audience?
Or are you staring at just one person the entire time you’re speaking?
Maybe you’ve never considered it before, but using your eyes is an easy way to connect with your audience and to increase your confidence when talking.
Here are three reasons why eye contact will help you present yourself stronger in front of an audience:
Jordan Rudess on Listening
At Improving Communications, we ask professional musicians to tell us about their “money maker;” their ability to listen and interact well with others. We ask these gifted artists to teach us more about listening so that in business, we can use similar practices to be more successful. Below is what Jordan Rudess had to say […]
Text-Speak in the Workplace
All choices in communication are of terrific importance. Modern-day shorthand (text-speak) is very useful, and entirely appropriate. (Did that just say what I think it said?) Yes, TXT shorthand is the right answer–when it’s used with the right audience. You can draw an analogy here to using profanity. Vulgar language, when used with the correct […]
Rude Business Phone Antics
What is proper Business Phone Behavior? Have you ever made a phone call to a business and gotten the answer, “So-and-so isn’t here right now. Can you call back in 15 minutes?” Do you find anything wrong with that? In a tennis game, when a player hits the ball, the second player hits it […]
Active Voice – When to use Active vs Passive
Many of us have seen the spellcheck on our devices suggest that we revise from passive voice to the active. OK. What if we don’t know what that means? What is active voice? When we talk about active and passive voice, we are talking about the action described by the verbs in the sentence. When you […]