An important part of speaking is the tone of our voice. Yes, the words we choose are important. The volume and rate of speed we use to deliver our message has a significant impact. A fourth ingredient to successful communication is our tone.
The tone of our voice is what communicates our emotions regarding the message we are delivering. Our tone tells the hearer(s) whether we believe what we are saying. We let our hearer(s) know if we are upset, happy, worried, condescending, skeptical, or any number of things.
Controlling the tone of our voice may possibly be the most difficult skill to learn in becoming a great communicator. Our tone reveals our secrets about how we feel about the conversation, the message, the person(s) we are talking to, etc.
Much like an actor playing a role in which the story line and the scene determines the tone of their voice, we too deliver information to the customer simply by the tone of our voice. The actor will not use the same tone of voice in a scene in the hospital with the distraught woman of a fatally injured spouse as they would if the scene was them playing a football player who just scored the winning touchdown verses the actor being a county prosecutor and the scene is a bad twist in their case.
Our tone has to change depending on what is happening. Remember, we are professional problem solvers. Our job is to help our customer resolve their problem they came to us with for help. We have to use a tone that demonstrates concern and empathy for our customer’s situation, encouragement because we believe we can find or we have the answer to fix their problem, calmness to bring hope and confidence to the situation.
A challenge to us in being in control of the tone of our voice is we may have just been dealing with a frustrating situation, and immediately the phone rings with a different customer on the other end of the line. We have to learn to be able to completely disarm ourselves from our frustration of 30 seconds ago, and portray the calm, collected, empathetic, confident consultant our customer is depending upon.
We can’t bring any of the frustration of the previous situation into the conversation with our current customer on the phone. If we do, we will create issues in this relationship.
Tone of voice is a powerful tool of which we need to master. It is a very difficult tool to become skilled in it’s use. As we work to create our performance from setting an appointment to delivering the vehicle back to our customer, we will find the tone of our voice is critical skill to master. Not only for our conversations on the phone with our customer, but with each and every interaction we have with people, both at our job and away.