Importance of Interpersonal Skills, Active Listening and Giving Feedback in Workplace

Interpersonal skill, active listening and giving feedback are closely related with each other. Competent employee of an organization should have interpersonal, active listening and giving feedback skill so that organization can achieve its pre-determined goals. Interpersonal skill is the individual behaviour which an individual use in daily life to communicate and interact with multiple people individually and in group. Similarly, active listening is the interpretation of content when we hear something, and feedback is the process of providing evaluation or information about the action or event. We will be talking more about interpersonal skill, active listening and giving feedback in detail.

It is the age of global business where organization operate its activities around the world. To operate the business in competent and efficient manner, competent and skilled employees are needed. Interpersonal skill is one of the major skills which is required in the employee of business organization these days. Interpersonal skills are important for the development of human relationship (Burleson, Metts, &Kirch,2000). Day to day operational activities of the business organization includes customer service, business dealing with partners, suppliers, vendor and so on. An employee who involves in these business operational activities should have interpersonal skills like teamwork, written and verbal two-way correspondence, responsibility, and accountability. There could be multiple case that may arise in business organization like customer complain, miscommunication, delay in services and so on. To deal with such problems, employees should be enriched with interpersonal skill so that they can analyse the situation quickly and use their skills to solve the problems.

Based on article published on journal of marketing theory and practices it shows that the customer complain about the service offered by the organization and the angry behaviour of customer have direct impact in the quality of service they offered (Tao, K., Karande, K. and Arndt, A.D.2016). It is known that customers are king of market however the angry and aggressive behaviour of customer influence the quality of service offered by the employee who involves in customer service. Though it might be the option for business organization to identify their weakness but its impact on employees is not positive. For dealing with which aggressive and angry customer, employee should have interpersonal skill. Expression of employee even affect the quality of service received by customer (Schneider and Bowen 1985; Schneider, Parkington, and Buxton 1980). So, it is important to provide service to the customer with smile and polite voice during customer service. Active listening is one of the important features of interpersonal skill. It helps to identify the problem of customer so that they can analyse the situation and provide feedback with them solution. For instance, an angry customer who complain about receiving damage product can be handle with proper communication and apologies along with requesting them to wait for receiving new product with discounted price. From the relevant example we can say that the use of interpersonal skill like proper communication, appropriate dealing with apologies and responsibility with offering discount on price help to handle the angry customer properly. It even helps to maintain proper customer relationship so that the company will not loose its customer and helps to maintain goodwill of the organization in the market. The manager of the organization should have regular meeting with employee so that they can organize interpersonal skill assessment program for all type of employee which helps to develop skills of democratic communication, teamwork and compassion.

Active listening and giving feedback are two major aspects which are very important in workplace along with other interpersonal skills. The employee of the organization needs to deal with multiple customer regarding their issues and concerns. In workplace the employee working in customer service department are responsible for handling all sorts of customer which involve existing customer and potential customer. Kinetic listening plays vital role for identifying the customer queries and their concerns regarding the organization. As an employee of organization, it is the responsibility to identify the findings of the customer so that they can provide them feedback for fulfilling their needs.

As per article published on social behaviour and personality, the customer who missed the price promotion paid the high price in compare with other customer (Chen, W., Tsai, D. and Chuang, H.C., 2010). This situation creates conflict, anger and disappointment among the customer which leads to behavioural responses such as complain. When customer identify about unfair price after collecting goods, then negative emotions like anger develop (Tsai & Lee, 2007). Furthermore, the scenario shows that employee could not respond to the customer positively which due to lack of active listening skill. It is important to give feedback to the supervisor about increasing angry customer. For addressing this sort of customer unhappiness, it is important to listen towards them for finding the reasons cause behind them which support for responding back with appropriate and relevant feedback on time. Diligent hearing towards customer helps to note the concerns which is important for providing feedback to the management so that they can minimize them in future days. In addition to that, while providing feedback in any specific issue it should focus directly on problem and the situation so that it would not make negative impact on expectation of customer.

Therefore, active listening and giving feedback are part of interpersonal skill which is important in workplace from performing operational activities to dealing with customer, supplier and vendor. Interpersonal skill helps to make an employee competent and skilled which lead toward completions of difficult and challenging task. Active listening is important factors for addressing the customer dissatisfaction and performing organizational task as instructed by manager. Providing feedback is necessary for finding relevant information and solutions for customer and management. The use of these skills helps to maintain the positive relationship between employee and manager of the organization. Hence, interpersonal skill, active listening and giving feedback acts as a mediator between organization and customer for maintaining sustainable relationship and helps to run organization smoothly.

References

1. Spitzberg, B.H. and Cupach, W.R., 2011. Interpersonal skills. The SAGE handbook of interpersonal communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.481-524.
2. Tao, K., Karande, K. and Arndt, A.D., 2016. How angry customer complaints influence salesperson commitment to service quality. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 24(3), pp.265-282.
3. Chen, W., Tsai, D. and Chuang, H.C., 2010. “Effects of missing a price promotion after purchasing on perceived price unfairness, negative emotions, and behavioral responses”. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 38(4), pp.495-507.