I was lucky to be able to join the CPL team four years ago. In the beginning it was difficult, not in the sense that the workload was too heavy or that I didn’t have the support (from the team) to cope with the work but rather I found it difficult to connect with clients over the phone. I worked as the marketing coordinator for Bentley South Africa previously and I dealt with clients face to face, making it easier to read their expressions and emotions when it came to telling me about their experience. Having to make the switch to purely auditory communication with no visual cues was challenging to say the least. However, over time (it happened a lot quicker than I thought) I was able to pick up on the customers emotional state of mind by merely listening and asking the right questions. Four years later, the anxiety, when calling someone I didn’t know, is no longer there. Even when I get a ‘difficult’ customer on the line, someone who is either having a bad day or swamped with work, I no longer feel anxious or afraid to speak to them, they either say ‘yes, lets chat’ or ‘no, now is not a good time’. My main objective is to listen to the stories of the clients who want to talk, empathetically and relay any information to Lexus that could help this customer in the future. My favorite part of this job is what I like to call, the ‘great call’ customers, those are the customers that have had a great experience, even though nothing unique has happened, I enjoy hearing the joy, excitement and awe in their voices when they tell me about the good, great or fantastic service that they received and how easy Lexus made it for them, on something that is a schlep to do. I’ve learnt that people want to be heard and that by being quiet, by not filling the dead space on the line, I get more information about their experience and a clearer picture. I’ve come to realize that this skill is invaluable in my everyday life, by just keeping still, allowing the other person to talk freely and not trying to get my own words in, misunderstanding can be avoided because not everyone has the verbal capacity to express themselves concisely, it may take them a bit of time to explain what they truly mean. I still enjoy working at CPL and with the fantastic members of the team and I look forward to the years to come.