Welcome, everyone, to the webinar, Client Trust, Your Business Imperative. We're so glad that you could be here today to learn more about building relationships with your clients based on trust. My name is Ted Annis. I'm the Senior Marketing Specialist with the International Hearing Society, and I will be your moderator for today. Our expert presenter today is C.W. Miller. C.W. is the founder and president of Custom Training Concepts and has been creating high-performance teams in a variety of industries for over 25 years. He is known nationwide for his inspirational keynotes, thought-provoking seminars, and highly interactive workshops. He has authored over 100 articles and training programs dealing with the human interaction, emotional intelligence, leadership, and management. His focus on the human interaction has created positive impacts in healthcare, manufacturing, and agencies, education, and the military, as well as in professional and non-profit associations. We're very excited to have C.W. as our presenter today, but before we get started, we have just a few housekeeping items. Please note that we're recording today's presentation so that we may offer it on demand through the IHS website in the future. This webinar is available for one continuing education credit through the International Hearing Society. We've uploaded the CE quiz to the handouts section of the webinar dashboard, and you may download it at any time. You can also find out more about receiving continuing education credit at our website, IHSinfo.org. Click on the webinar banner on the homepage or choose webinars from the navigation menu. You'll find the CE quiz along with the information on how to submit your quiz to IHS for credit. If you'd like a copy of the slideshow from today's presentation, you can download it from the handouts section of the webinar dashboard, or you can access it from the webinar page on the IHS website. Feel free to download the slides now. Tomorrow, you will receive an email with a link to a survey on this webinar. It is brief, and your feedback will help us create valuable content for you moving forward. Today we'll be covering the following topics. Customer service versus customer satisfaction, trust impacts client relations, understanding cycles of trust, the three faces of trust, and the seven keys to building trust. At the end, we'll move on to a Q&A session. You can send us a question for CW at any time by entering your question in the question box on the webinar dashboard, usually located to the top or the right of your webinar screen. We'll take as many questions in the time we have available. Now I'm going to turn it over to CW, who will guide you through today's presentation. Take it away, CW. Well, thanks a lot, Ted, and I want to thank all of you for tuning in today. Certainly good to be with you, and it's certainly good to have this opportunity to talk about what I think is perhaps the single most important element in terms of building teams, and certainly for you in terms of obtaining and maintaining clients in your business. Before we get started, I'd like to ask you a question to kind of set the stage for this. How important are your patients to you? How important are they? How important are they to your business? What do they do for you personally? Now if you had an opportunity to download the handouts that I've provided, there's a place for you to make some notes on this. And even more important than this question are two others. Why should they come to you? How special is your service? What distinguishes you from every other offering they may have? I'm going to give you just a few seconds to think about this. If you don't have my handouts, you may want to pull out a little notebook and just jot down some thoughts on this, because I want you to continue to focus on this as we go through this entire webinar. So what really matters to your clients? We know now how much they matter to you, but in terms of why they should come to you, in terms of how they see you and what they get from you, what do you think really matters to them? I'd like to put this in perspective using a study that was done by Merrill Lynch a number of years ago that looked at their clients' choices and how their clients choose brokers for their financial services. What would you guess would have been the number one reason why people choose a broker? They like the person. Now, most people wouldn't think of that as just the most important thing. So let's think about this. What would you guess would be number two and number three? Honesty and trust. We're going to see all through this how important trust really is in terms of how your patients make their choices. And what would you consider to be the least important factor in terms of why they make their choice? The ability to make money. Now, one would think that that would be the most important factor, because after all, these are financial services. But as it turned out, it ranked clear dead last after all these things that have to do with their interactions with you. So what really matters to them? Well, what really matters is how they feel about you. But as I think you'll learn, even more important than that is how they think you feel about them. I'd like to put this into perspective with a kind of a consideration. I don't care what you know until I know that you care. I think this depicts perfectly what's going on in your patients' minds when they're making their choices. And how do we show that? How do we show how much we care about them? How do we demonstrate it in what we offer? What I'm really talking about now is the difference between customer service and customer satisfaction. And I'd like to spend just a little bit of time on this so that I'm sure that you understand how I differentiate these two. Customer service is what we give based on our understanding of what the customer will or in our minds should appreciate. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is the level of appreciation the customer actually has for what we have given. Now I have oftentimes in my live workshops talking about these two elements, a demonstration that sort of shows people how this works. And what I do is I hand out to everybody a gift. I do believe that customer service is a gift and it's something that we offer and give to all of our clients and all of our patients all of the time. So this gift that I hand out, after everybody has it, has a chance to look at it, I ask them to rate it from 1 to 5, with 1 being the best possible gift I could have given them and 5 being something that really isn't that important to them. Invariably, a few will rate it very high and give it a 1 or maybe even a 2. But the vast majority are right around 3. And that's no surprise. However, always, there are a number that rate me as low as 4 and even those that rate me as a 5, a gift that mattered to them very little at all. And this tells us, this shows us that what we think they might appreciate doesn't necessarily resonate for them. You see, there are a lot of variations in our approach in how we deliver this thing we call customer service. And to make it satisfactory, to make it satisfactory to them, we have to consider variations in our approach. So to do this, I'd like to go down through the various things we might consider. First of all, we need to think about how we define what we offer. Now with customer service, what we offer is typically defined by the provider, by us. But in customer satisfaction, what we offer needs to be defined by them, the customer. It's also important to consider where we place our focus. Customer service usually has us focusing in things that are more general or more generic. While with customer satisfaction, our focus is very specific, very specific to the needs and expectations of that particular customer. We also need to look at how we relate to our clients and our patients. With customer service, that tends to be based on a standard set of guidelines. And these guidelines can come from a number of places, which we'll talk about in a minute. But with customer satisfaction, rather than being based just on a set of guidelines, our approach needs to be more flexible, and in some cases, even negotiable. So who does it apply to? Well, with customer service, it typically applies to broad groups, a one-size-fits-all, if you will. And we tend to apply it similarly in every case. But with customer satisfaction, it applies to specific individuals. We treat everyone special. Remember I asked that question in the opening dialogue. How special do you think they find you? We also need to consider what this customer service or what these offerings are based on. Typically, with customer service, it's going to be based on surveys or books. You might have found some of these provided by IHS. And there are certainly a number of books out there on what constitutes good customer service. And while I wouldn't argue that those things certainly provide good service, in customer satisfaction, we need to base it on the specific feedback from that particular patient. And this is a little bit different. Surveys tend to get very generic responses. Books, again, tend to use a one-size-fits-all. But when we actually get feedback from a customer, we know more directly and more specifically how what we're offering is applying to their needs. We also have to think about how we communicate. You see, in customer service, the focus is on talking and selling. We're telling them what we have to offer. We're telling them why it's great. We're telling them why they should be happy to be with us and why we're going to do everything that they need. But in customer satisfaction, the focus is on listening, listening to their needs, listening to their expectations, trying to determine what they need so that we can place our focus there. So finally, we have to look at what is the nature of our intent in terms of what we offer our patients. With customer service, the nature is based on what we plan to offer. We've decided before they walk through the door what we're going to do to make them happy. But with customer satisfaction, it's based on that customer's expectations. So what we do with one customer that walks through the door is altogether different from how we treat the next patient in line. Still, we really have to know. In order to understand how well we're doing, we sort of have to know. We have to know, is this patient satisfied with what we've offered? Are they, or are we rather, meeting their expectations? Do they know how much we care? You see, all of these things are going to be buried in their thoughts and their feelings. It's not something that's always easy to read. It's not something that we can necessarily know ahead of time. So here's a hot tip for you. To truly know the thoughts and feelings of your clients, to know if you are meeting their expectations, you must have open, honest feedback. You have to get feedback from these people. Now, all through life, and certainly in many of your businesses, I'm sure you're already giving feedback. So I assume that the answer of, do people give you feedback, is a yes. People give us feedback. But here's a more important question for you. How candid do you think people are? How honest are they in terms of what they're telling you about how well you are meeting their expectations? I want you to think about that a minute. How honest do you think they are? In most cases, in most of the live workshop experiments that I've ran, people are fairly honest. But they're not entirely honest. They're not entirely open. There's lines that they're careful about crossing. And it's these lines and where these lines fall that become very important to us in terms of the reliability of that feedback. Is it feedback that we can use to actually improve? Or is it feedback that offers us validation? Here's another hot tip for you. There's a reason why people are not always honest. And it's because of a lack of trust. Now, as we get more into trust, you're going to understand how this works. But I'm going to put this into perspective for you. In your own, put you on the side of the receiver and ask you to evaluate how much you trust other people. How open and honest are you with people? And when you're not honest with them, you're not always honest. And it's because of a lack of trust. Now, as we get more into trust, you're going to understand how this works. But I'm going to put this into perspective for you. In your own, put you on the side of the receiver and ask you to evaluate how much you trust other people. How open and honest are you with people? And when you're not honest with them, you're not always honest. And it's because of a lack of trust. Now, as we get more into trust, you're going to understand how this works. But I'm going to put this into perspective for you. In your own, put you on the side of the receiver and ask you to evaluate how much you trust other people. How open and honest are you with people? And when you're not honest with them, it's because in some way, you don't trust them. And what is your biggest concern? What is your client's biggest concern when they're deciding how much to trust you in terms of how honest and open they can be with their feedback? Their biggest concern? How you will react. Now, hopefully, you're not reacting like the picture on your screen right now. But I'm going to put this into perspective for you. In your own, put you on the side of the receiver and ask you to evaluate how much you trust other people. How open and honest are you with people? Now, hopefully, you're not reacting like the picture on your screen right now. But it might be the subtle roll of the eyes. Or it might be the look away. Or it might be the defensiveness. It might be argumentative. All of these things actually lower trust. They actually tell those people that they can't trust how you're going to react. This could be based, by the way, on how you've reacted in the past when they've tried to give you feedback. Or it could be based on how you've reacted in the past when they've tried to give you feedback. Now, hopefully, you're not reacting like the picture on your screen right now. But I'm going to put this into perspective for you. In your own, put you on the side of the receiver and ask you to evaluate how much you trust how you've reacted in the past when they've tried to give you feedback. But you need to be concerned with how you're reacting when you're getting this feedback. Are you reacting in a way that encourages them to give you more? Or in a way that might tell them that, really, all you're reacting to is this? interested in is validation. Now don't get me wrong, validation is a wonderful thing. I love validation. It always makes me feel good. It feeds my ego. The problem is validation never gave anyone anything that they can use to improve. It's those things that sting, those things that bother us a bit that are the things that are evident in terms of need for work. So trust really matters. Obviously I've talked about how it matters just in terms of feedback, but it matters in all kinds of ways. So I'd like to list down here some other reasons why I think trust matters to your patients and why that matters to you. You see, unless patients trust you, they won't come to you in the first place. That first step through your door is a leap of faith. That too requires trust. And if they don't trust you, like we just said in the previous slides, you will be less likely to get honest feedback from them. Unless they trust you, it will be difficult to learn their expectations. They may not share all that with you, and then you will never know what exactly it is that they're looking for until it's not delivered. I've done a number of workshops on expectations. My favorite title for those workshops is Great Expectations Lead to Great Disappointments. Because virtually in every relationship you have, I mean spousal relationships, relationships with significant others, with friends, with family, with relatives, with neighbors, with the community, and yes, with your colleagues and your clients, the number one reason for a problem in that relationship is somebody failed to meet somebody's expectations. Now it may have been that they did something that was unexpected, or it may have been that they did or failed to meet expectations. But always it is this pain that we feel behind not meeting our expectation, the sense of being let down that causes a loss of trust and almost inevitably a problem in the relationship. Unless patients trust you, they may not be open about their physical condition. How then can you do the kind of job you need to do in terms of diagnosing their condition and providing the right kind of devices for their needs? You have to know about their physical conditions. But if they don't trust you, they may not be open about them. Unless your patients trust you, they may be suspicious of the diagnosis you do give regarding their needs. And if they're suspicious of the diagnosis you give, they may not necessarily follow your instructions. And unless they trust you, they may be less likely to follow your instructions on the proper use of the devices they have, which will inevitably lead to a problem. And then, unless they trust you, they will be likely to blame you for anything that is less than perfect. So how will they decide? How do you think they're going to decide on whether or not to trust you or how much to trust you? What factors is it that will lead them to the high levels of trust that you need in order to provide the service that you wish to, and in order to pull these customers in and hold them for a long period of time? Well, here's another hot tip. At any given moment, every client, and potential clients for that matter, will determine their level of trust, the level of trust that they have in you, based on two factors. And these factors concern their interaction with you. Is it predictable and will it be positive? You see, until they know you well enough to know what to predict from you, and until they know that what they predict from you is positive, they're going to be cautious. They're going to be less trusting. And it is our job as providers to build that trust so that they know what to expect, and what they expect will be something that they will appreciate. There's a few other additional insights I'd like to offer concerning trust that I think will help us understand this. First of all, trust is rarely present or absent. We tend to say we do or we don't trust, but that's not exactly the case. And as we learn more about trust, you'll see how this works. But in fact, there are degrees of trust. It exists by level. So we may trust some very little and some very much, but even the ones that we trust very little, we do trust a little. And almost always, the ones we trust very much have room where they could actually improve that level of trust as well. I think it's also important to understand that we are not born with a lack of trust. Babies trust implicitly. Any of you who have ever interacted with the baby can see the trust in their eyes. One could say they don't know enough to not trust you, but not trusting is a learned behavior. Now, who do you think we learn that from? Where was your first lesson in not trusting? When was the first time that you started suspecting that you can't always trust people? Well, I believe, and I certainly say for me, it occurred that first time that when I cried, I didn't get what I wanted. You see, very early on, we jump to help them when they cry. But as time goes by, we decide, yeah, you know, that's not always such a good idea. And as soon as we realize that things are not as we expect, that we don't always get what we expect, we begin to see the sides of not trusting. You see, we learn not to trust through betrayal. Now, I don't necessarily think betrayal is an all-too-powerful word. Some think that it's kind of harsh when we say it that way, and it is, and yet that's how it feels to the person who is feeling betrayed. And sometimes it's just a matter of they let us down, but sometimes that simple letdown feels like an overt deception. So, how it feels is like a betrayal. Here's another hot tip for you in terms of this thing I call betrayal. Everyone will be or will feel betrayed. You see, there's three ways it can happen, and when you understand these three ways it can happen, you'll see how prevalent it is. First of all, it can be intentional. Yes, there are people out there whose intent it is to deceive us. Now, I am hoping that none of you have an intent to deceive your patients, but it can be intentional, and that is one way that people are betrayed. But it also can be unintentional. In unintentional ways, we let people down and give them this sense of betrayal when we never intended to. Perfect example of this might be that time that you said you'd be there at 8, but you struggled to get there by 830. Now, you may have had a flat tire, may have been bad traffic, could have been an emergency that came up, all kinds of things can get in the way of delivering on a promise. But to the person who's not receiving what they were led to believe they could expect, they feel betrayed. And they'll be more cautious next time when you say 8 o'clock, will it really be 8 o'clock or could it be somewhere a little bit after that? They don't know for sure. You've lost some of your predictability, you've lost some of your positivity, so the level of trust has gone down a bit. It may not be totally gone, but it's not where it once was. And the third way that people feel betrayal is the one that I guess I like the best. I call it fictional. Nothing ever happened at all for us to feel betrayed, and yet we do. A perfect example of this might be when someone told you that somebody else betrayed you, but they never did. And yet, you were led to believe that they did, and you feel that they did, and you feel betrayed, even though there was perhaps nothing to feel betrayed about. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the numbers of things that we can come up with in our own mind to cause us to feel betrayed and lower our level of trust. Also, trust is never static. It is always increasing and decreasing based on our experience. You see, if you have an experience from 10 minutes ago that caused you to feel betrayed, the very next interaction you have is still going to be subject to the feelings you felt from the one you had 10 minutes ago. And if you had one a few years ago with somebody in a similar career, somebody in a similar position, you may be more suspicious of these people now. So you see, it may increase and decrease based on the person. You might trust some people that are close to you very highly, and yet there may be some people that are a little more distant from you that you just don't trust as much. So as you're going through your day and you're interacting with different people, your level of trust is rising and it's falling. And it's rising and falling with specific people, but remember that as soon as your trust was down with one person, the next one you go to doesn't exactly start out with a clean slate because your feelings have not necessarily completely left your mind. And finally, it changes relative to the situation. Now, I've told people a number of times, I love group decisions, but if I'm lying in the middle of the road bleeding, please don't have a committee meeting. The situation varies and in some cases I would trust some people much higher. I would trust most of you to help me with my hearing needs, but when it comes to heart surgery, I am probably looking somewhere else. So the situation changes and in a different situation we have a different level of trust. In some places we feel very vulnerable, we feel very nervous, we feel very scared, and in those situations our trust level is very low. So what this provides us is what I call the cycle of trust, this constantly moving up and down cycle of trust. And I'd like to show this sort of with, it's just going to be kind of like a graph. So you have trust plotted on the left-hand side with low and high, and from left to right is going to be the transition over time. So it starts out with this building process where we're building trust and then all of a sudden one of those three things for some reason kicked in and they felt feel betrayed. So what happens at this point in time? That trust sinks, it goes down. It may only go a little, but oftentimes it really plummets. And it is at this low point when trust has been hurt, when trust is at its lowest, that what I call the paradox of trust must kick in. You must take a risk. You see the paradox of trust is that in order to have a trusting relationship you must trust. No one can demonstrate to you how much you can trust them until you've taken that risk, until you've given them that trust and seen the results. So assuming you take the risk, assuming you understand the paradox and you begin trusting, we start a rebuilding process which goes up and invariably down, but hopefully up again, eventually rising to the point of mutual satisfaction. And this is a cycle of trust. There are also three phases of trust. So this cycle, while being affected by people, places, and things, and experiences and all that, they're also going to be based on where we place our focus relative to these three phases of trust. We're going to be looking at people relative to their ability. In this case they're going to be looking at you relative to your ability. Can you do it? Can you provide the level of professional service that they hope for? The second phase of trust is integrity. And even if I know you can do it, do I know that you will do it? And third, it's relative to emotion. How will you react when I try to tell you what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking? Let's look at each one of these. Ability, that has to do with our education level, it has to do with our experience, and in some cases our physical capabilities. These are the things they look at when they're trying to predict our ability. On integrity, it has to do with doing the right thing even when you don't have to. Now oftentimes I say, you've heard this statement, doing the right thing when nobody's looking, but sometimes these patients are looking. Give you a path and tell you it's okay not to do the right thing, but still you know what the right thing is. And whether or not you do the right thing when you don't have to determines your level of integrity. It also has to do with what you say behind the backs of others. Can they trust you with confidential information? We all understand the HIPAA requirements, but what about those things that don't fall under HIPAA requirements? Like what one patient thinks about irrelevance, or what they might say about their feelings in those moments they have with you. Are those things that are confidential too, or do they get shared with your colleagues, shared with others, that then could possibly find its way back to those people and show that maybe you don't have the integrity that they thought you did. And the third one is emotions. When it comes to teamwork and interaction in the office, this is probably the most important one, but it's also incredibly important regarding feedback. This is how you react to what others say and do. It deals with defensiveness and potential overreaction like the face you saw in the picture that people are afraid of. But it also has to do with emotional intelligence. Now I want to spend just a moment on emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not the absence of emotion. It's not being void of feelings. It's the ability to have emotion without emotion having you. So when emotion has you, when emotion takes over and controls your actions, I call this emotional hijacking. And I have a wheel here that sort of shows how this works. It starts up in the right hand column with an action. This could be something somebody says or even just something that happens. But as soon as that happens, in our mind, we evaluate it by comparison to all the other things that have happened in our lives. And we decide, is this good or bad? Is this up or down? Is this right or wrong? And then that evaluation leads to the emotion. And the emotion is inherently linked to this evaluation. And it can be things like anger or fear or happiness and trust. But that emotion then triggers an impulse. An impulse to react to that emotion. And it's that impulse that determines how we react. Now it's important for each of us to understand that we don't have to react to that impulse. That time when we feel hurt, that time when we feel stung by feedback, we don't have to react defensively. But we probably will have an impulse to. And that will lead to a reaction. We will either succumb to the impulse and react without thinking, or we'll temper our reaction a bit with a concern for how it's going to impact the patient. But the important thing to understand as soon as we react, that reaction is now seen by our mind as a new action. And it can reinforce this wheel, make it move faster, get more out of control, or it can slow us down. This is how we get emotionally hijacked early in the morning perhaps with a couple of things going wrong. And it can ruin our entire day because we're always expecting the next bad thing to happen. Because we're still locked in this emotional hijacking cycle. But we can turn that around. But to do so, we have to learn not to respond to the impulse and react with something that is a different, counteractive kind of way of reacting. So this leads me to what I call my seven simple keys for building trust, for creating the kind of trust that builds long-standing relationships. Number one, be accountable. Do what you say. Now this sounds pretty easy on the surface, but sometimes again while being emotionally hijacked, we might make a promise we know when we're making it. We can't keep it. Now we want to. Perfect example might be when they call up and they say I really need help and somebody says well if you can get here by 8, I think we can get you in. And they show up at 8 and somewhere around 10 o'clock somebody's ready to see them. Now wasn't intentional, but it still wasted a lot of their time. We have to do what we say. We have to understand what their expectations are. We have to understand how the promises we make, the things that we say build those expectations, and then we have to understand how not meeting those expectations can destroy trust. So we have to do what we say we're going to do. We have to learn to respond with respect and concern always. Now I'm sure that all of you understand what it means to respect your patients and I'm sure all of you understand how to show concern for them, and yet I'm sure all of you have had one of those what I call difficult patients that as soon as they walked in the door, those who weren't able to get out of the room and had to stay there and deal with them, had to listen to things that they didn't want to hear, had to listen to what they called the crazy person, and this is where how we respond gets more difficult. Now we might try to say the right things and we might try to show respect and concerns, but we may not always be aware of what they recognize is that roll of the eyes, that glance away, that heavy sigh, that change from a smile to a frown, the things that they pick up on that perhaps even we don't pick up on that tell them that they're not being respected and they're not being shown total concern. Now it may be justified. This isn't about whether or not it's justifiable. This is about whether or not they pick it up and what they feel and do they feel something that encourages them to trust you more or something that causes them to trust you less. In every coaching program that I've ever done with any of my clients, I always talk about the importance of celebrating success. I'm very big on goals and I like to set goals that are very short-term goals. Goals that will talk about what are you going to achieve tomorrow and next week. Long-term goals are important, but short-term goals are the stepping stones to those long-term goals and I believe we need to celebrate the success of each goal we reach and one of the goals that you're going to have with your clients who's building their trust is delivering satisfaction. So when you see that this satisfaction has been delivered, when you see that their trust is increasing, this is something to celebrate because in the celebration you psychologically build confidence, you psychologically build trust yourself and this encourages you to take more risks, encourages you to try harder, encourages you to go for greater challenges. So the celebration becomes an instrumental part of the goal-setting and achieving process and when it comes to trust, when it comes to building a great relationship, when it comes to having patients who not only want you for their provider but will actually go out and tell everybody else that they should go to you because you are so trustworthy and they have such a good relationship with you, that kind of success should always be your goal and that's what you should celebrate every step you get closer to it. Number four, you have to be honest and you have to accept honest feedback. Two sides to this thing of honesty. You have to be honest with them about what you see and what you feel. If you're constantly tempering what you see and what you feel because you're afraid to be honest or you don't know if they can handle honesty, then the fact is they don't know, they're probably going to learn at some point in time that you're not totally honest with them and that affects their level of trust. But by the same token, when they are trying to be honest with you, even with some things that you may not want to hear, you have to learn how to accept that with respect and concern and let them know that you appreciate it. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't feel what they say. I'm not telling you not to be hurt by something that has a big sting to it when they tell you that you haven't really delivered the way you thought you did. That does hurt, but the way you react to it can be very different. I can react with anger and say, who are you to tell me whether or not I'm a good doctor? Or I can say, thank you so much for sharing that with me. It really stings to hear that, but I appreciate your honesty and I appreciate you having the trust to tell me that and it gives me something that I can look at in the future that I can improve from. Those two different ways of responding to a statement that hurts can have a significant impact on the long term quality of your relationship. Number five, you have to learn to view shortcomings as opportunities. You will fail. You will fail to deliver. You will not always satisfy them, but that's okay. Every shortcoming that you have is an opportunity to learn and grow and get better and they will have shortcomings too. They will have a shortcoming in their level of trust that you need to build on and grow and you have to recognize that every time they fall short of the level of trust that you want, it's an opportunity for you to take action to help it grow and you will have to take action. You'll have to take risks and seek to build or rebuild trust and there will be times when they will feel betrayed and you have to find a way to encourage them to take a risk with you and give you another chance and give you the opportunity to show them that they can trust you. And finally, in all of the situations that you have, in all of the difficulties you encounter with your patients, you must seek win-win solutions. You cannot allow it to get into a right and wrong discussion. You have to remember to encourage the process to evolve in a way that continues to build the relationship, that continues to grow the respect, that continues to build the trust, that continues to strengthen the trust. So there's good news in this. The good news is that you can impact the level of trust. You can have an impact on how much they trust you, but you cannot be passive. The biggest mistake that people make with this process of trust is just assuming that it's either there or it's not and I am going to be a victim of whatever is the case. You cannot be passive about it. You cannot let it go where it goes on its own. You must take specific steps and what I call be purposeful about building trust. Being purposeful about building trust starts with an open acknowledgement. It's about being honest and open and saying, I want to build a more trusting relationship with you. You have to let your patients know that you want to gain their trust. I've been in situations with car dealerships where the common thing that they ask me is, CW, what do I need to do to gain your business, to earn your business? And you see this is the wrong question. The right question is, what do I need to do to earn your trust? You also have to take definitive action. You have to take specific actions to demonstrate those seven keys that we just talked about. You have to be working on those. You have to have open, honest discussions with your clients that say, what can I do to make it better? What can I do to get you to trust me more? What can we do to encourage you to have the faith to take the risk and let us prove how much you can trust us? You have to respond respectfully to any sense of betrayal you may have caused. Now, it may have been unintentional. It may even be fictional. But it doesn't change how they feel. And your relationship with them and their future trust in you is going to be based on that feeling, not on whether you're right or wrong or whether you can prove them right or wrong. You might be able to prove that they're wrong, and they should have believed you, and they go away going, well, I guess he showed me. That doesn't make them trust you more. It doesn't make them feel better about you. First, deal with the feelings. The rest will come easily after that. I'd like to close with a Latin phrase, acta non verba, action not words. You see, it's your actions that will make the difference, not your words. For most people, going through a work like, shop like this, within 30 minutes or 30 days, you'll have forgotten most of what you heard here, unless you take some of what you learn here and actually put it into action as well. When I was younger, I studied French for a number of years, but I can't parlay French at all now. The reason why is because I never used it. Now, had I gone to France and began to use that French all the time, I could probably speak it very well. So my parting challenge to you deals with this act of non-verba. What will you do in the next week to increase your client's trust? If you have my handout, there's a place for you to note something on this. If not, jot it down on a piece of paper. But make a commitment to yourself, to your business, and to your clients right now. What are you going to do in the next week to build trust? Then there's something for you to ponder. What can you do when that client feels betrayed to encourage them to take a risk? I've also enclosed in the handouts of mine a worksheet that I call Builders and Busters. It's an opportunity for you to decide what you're creating. Are you building trust or are you busting trust? What are the factors that build trust and what are the factors that bust trust? I encourage you to post this in your office and let your teammates write down things that they think build trust or bust trust. Even better, share it with your patients. Let them put some things up there to offer you some new insights on what they're thinking about. If they lift something up there that's a bust of trust, probably they've experienced it and they may have experienced it from you. Always consider which are you creating. With that, I'm going to turn it back over to Ted and see if we have any questions. Thanks, CW. CW, we're so excited that we've had over 200 people that have joined us today on this webinar. We do have some time for questions. If you have a question for CW, please enter it in the question box on your webinar dashboard. CW, our first question is from Michael. Michael asks, what would you recommend that we do if we have a client that has expectations that have not been met? Well, first and foremost, I think you have to acknowledge and understand their feelings regarding the fact that that expectation was not met. It's probably, it almost always is, the case where the expectation was not clearly understood. This does not make it their fault for not sharing that expectation with you. They may have shared it or felt they shared it, but you may not have understood it correctly. You're trying to deliver expectations and yet you missed the mark, oftentimes because of a misunderstanding. The most important thing you can do is show them that you care enough to get a better understanding of what their expectation was so that you can meet it in the future. Now, I have what I call a five-step shift, and it starts with acknowledging them. Acknowledge that you understand that missing that expectation affects their trust level in you, and that concerns you, and you care about that because you care about them. Then endeavor to find out more. Listen to learn. Understand what they need and encourage them to give you another shot. Now that you have a better understanding. Are there others? Thanks, CW. CW, our next question is from Helen. Helen asks, how can I engage my entire office in trust building? First of all, I want to say, please do. But second of all, let me give you some tools that you might use. One is, if you print it out, again, my handout, take that back, make a copy of a blank one, hand it out to all your office people and hold a little one-hour workshop in your office yourself, and you lead it. Demonstrate to them the things that you learned from this. Share with them the things that you think are important and allow them to share back what they think would be important. As you go through this, while we only had one hour in a presentation format, you can spend a lot more time on some of these areas to gain deeper understanding and to get people operating as a team all on the same page. The single most important factor is helping them understand how important trust is, how volatile it is, and all of the different ways that people can feel betrayal and why it's important to step out there and pull them back in. I think that the tool that I gave you called Builders and Busters is a simple fun way to put things out there for your entire office. You can get them talking about all the things that they think that build trust and bust trust. I will tell you that this trust-building process is incredibly important for the performance of teams. You might start with getting people to be more open and honest with each other in the office on what constitutes a trust builder and what constitutes a trust buster, where they feel comfortable and uncomfortable. If some of you are really interested in doing this, you might go to my website or you might send me an email. I have a worksheet that you can use specifically with specific individuals on building trust. But use these tools. More importantly, be purposeful, be proactive, talk about it, and go after it. Next. Thanks, CW. CW, our next question comes from Sandy. Sandy asks, could you give an example of an activity that builds trust with customers? Well, I have given a couple just now. It's interesting. These two questions build on each other. But let's take a specific customer that you want to build trust with. Start, again, be personal and purposeful. Mrs. Miller, I appreciate that you came here and gave us the opportunity to serve you and to help you with your hearing needs. I'd like to spend a few moments sitting with you and understanding what your expectations of us are. I want to be sure that we deliver the kind of satisfaction that you're looking for, and I want you to be able to trust me. Now, I could tell you to trust me, but what I want to do is talk to you about the things that you might want from me that will enable you to trust me more. It's, again, the most important exercise that you can do is conversation. Honest conversation, open conversation that acknowledges what you're trying to achieve, what you want to do with that person, and gives them plenty of opportunity to give you feedback in return. And, of course, you need to recognize going in that this exercise, too, is an exercise in your ability to react in an appropriate way, in a way that demonstrates respect and concern and allows you to build and enhance that level of trust as you go. There's no reason to expect that they know what to predict their first day with you. There's no reason for them to predict that they can trust you when they feel betrayed. They may have been betrayed by another provider, and they don't have a good reason to respect and trust you. So you need to get inside their heads, and it is this process that will build the trust as much as anything else. Thanks, C.W. C.W., our next question comes from Elizabeth. Elizabeth asks, what are some nonverbal cues that someone may have when they begin losing trust? Well, when you tell them you're going to do something and they roll their eyes, that might be a particularly good cue. But there are some other more subtle ones. When you tell them something and they lean back away from you. It's interesting, trust in general also can be shown in the same way that they show you whether they're comfortable with what you're saying or not. When they have high levels of trust, they're looking at you. They're paying attention to you. They're listening to you. When they start to not trust you, they start to look away. They start to disengage from you. Now, there are these kinds of cues that are visible. The rolling of the eyes, the looking away, the sitting back in their seat, pulling away from you, perhaps crossing their arms. All of these things show disconnection and are going to be based on a decreasing level of trust. As they start to trust you more, they lean in towards you more. They start to look you in the eye more. So, these are the things to watch for. But I want to just take a second and ask you to also be very open in a sensory way. Oftentimes, you can sense the level of trust. And by the way, they can sense your level of honesty. You may be saying all the right things, but your head's not in the right place. You may be feeling all the right things that you're told to feel, but your heart isn't behind it. And that can happen with them, too. And these things can be felt if we pay attention to their feelings. There's a lot to be said for trusting your gut in this thing called trust. Thanks, CW. CW, our last question comes from Kristen. Kristen asks, what can I do when a client feels like they have been betrayed? Ooh. Yeah, this is the hardest one. One of the things, I have a little quip that I like to use that sort of depicts how I think you need to interact with them in this case. When they feel betrayed, I assume that they've acknowledged to you that they have, and this is usually going to come in the form of a complaint, and it's almost always going to be a hurtful one. So when this happens, your response is the single most critical thing. Can you pull them in and lift them up instead of pushing them away and putting them down? When they feel betrayed, oftentimes it's not going to be because of something that you knowingly did. It's because of something that you unwittingly did or something that they thought you did that never happened, and you will have a basic instinct to be defensive. You need to overcome that. And first, say thank you to them for sharing their thoughts. Thank you to them for being open and honest with you. Thank you for letting me know what you're experiencing. I'm going to give you my quick five-step shift, and it's very easy. If some of you want more on this, again, you can send me a note by email, but it's five steps. Thank you is the first step. Acknowledge them. The second step is to apologize without blame. Don't blame somebody else, and don't even blame yourself. Simply acknowledge that you're sorry that happened. Thank you. I'm sorry that happened. The third and fourth come together. This is where you distinguish yourself and raise yourself up and tell them that they should take a risk again. Thank you for letting me know. I'm sorry that happened. But it's a good thing that you're doing business with us because we are folks that want to pay attention to this and build a more trusting relationship. That's one through four, and the fifth step is to open negotiation. How about I do this in the future to help you trust me more? So these are the things you have to learn to do. Betrayal is the most dangerous area of all. It is oftentimes the one area where our response determines whether they'll be back or whether they won't. So you have to respond with respect and concern and appreciation for their sharing. Are there more? That's it, CW. That's all the time we have. I'd like to thank you, CW, for an excellent presentation today, and I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today on the IHS webinar, Client Trust, Your Business Imperative. If you'd like to get in contact with CW, you may email him at CW at customtrainingconcepts.com for more information about receiving a continuing education credit through this webinar. Through IHS, visit the IHS website at IHSinfo.org, click on the webinar banner, or find more information on the website. IHS members receive a substantial discount on CE credits, so if you're not already an IHS member, you will find more information on our website. Please keep an eye out for the feedback survey that you will receive tomorrow via email. We ask that you take just a moment to answer a few brief questions about today's presentation. Thank you again for being with us today, and we will see you at the next IHS webinar.

trust

building relationships

clients

customer service

customer satisfaction

open and honest feedback

emotional intelligence

accountable

honesty

lasting relationships