Conflict resolution is an important element that ensures the growth and success of a business. This is key in ensuring that conflicts do not quickly escalate affecting a business’s bottom line.
Conflict is inevitable, but the difference between good and bad conflict is how people approach and respond when conflict arises. Here are some ways in which service businesses can resolve conflicts by harnessing the power of effective communication.
Conflict in the Service Business
There are a myriad of ways conflict can occur in the service business. The service business is a people-centered industry, thus ample chances for conflict to take place. Despite a company’s or employees’ best efforts, conflict is highly inevitable.
Within the service business, the most commonly occurring sources of conflict comprise the following;
- When you upset a customer with a product or service
- When employee disagreements arise
- Miscommunication between teams is one of the most prevalent causes of conflict.
Conflict in the workplace can affect employees’ productivity and engagement with their tasks and even affect how they engage with customers.
For example, if you run a landscaping business, employees in conflict can recommend different products or approaches like frost blankets for plants vs row covers or trimming vs pruning.
Without a united front, your employees may confuse clients. This could lead to a dip in the service’s quality provided, and lead to customers searching for alternatives that will best meet their needs.
A conflict-ridden work environment can also lead to a dip in productivity and morale.
Workplace conflict shifts employees’ focus. Instead of focusing on completing work tasks, employees become distracted because of conflict, and they focus on the negative feelings brought forward because of the conflict.
Honest Dialogue Encourages Empathy
Prioritizing and encouraging open and honest dialogue encourages empathy, and businesses become well-equipped to resolve conflict and ensure increased opportunities for the improvement of client relationships and customer satisfaction.
It is vital to have practical communication and conflict resolution systems in place. This assists an organization to listen to client concerns or grievances actively.
An organization can then provide clear communication and swiftly resolve the situation. This proactive approach can help to foster positive relationships and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, and it also serves to ease conflict.
For example, if you’re a service provider working with a wedding venue for a couple in Beverly Hills, you’ll be dealing with both the client and the venue; this can lead to multiple requests or changes that can lead to conflict because of miscommunication. Only through effective communication, listening, and providing simple information and boundaries are every step essential to resolve such a situation.
Transparency and Regular Updates Help Staff
Regular updates and transparent contracts help manage expectations and ensure that all parties involved agree with how things will move forward. Ensuring that staff receives the conflict resolution training promotes a supportive and engaged environment.
Conflict leads to stress in the workplace, and stressed employees seldom maintain consistent productivity levels or engage effectively at work.
This will have the trickle-down effect of affecting employee morale. When morale is down, employees are more prone to burnout which negatively affects employee turnover, leading to a decrease in profit margins and affecting a company’s ability to reach its goals and objectives.
How Conflict Affects Business
A company riddled with conflict will eventually have a poor reputation. Not only amongst its employees but across the industry and this may eventually reach customers who understandably will not want to be associated with a company that cannot manage conflict nor communicate well.
If conflict is common in an organization, it is very easy for a company’s reputation to be tarnished because of this. It can lead to a negative representation of a business’s brand, turn off potential and current customers, and drastically decrease highly skilled people from wanting to join or to be associated with a company that cannot communicate well to resolve conflict.
When you do not resolve conflict within the workplace, it can lead to a host of issues that can negatively affect a business’s bottom line. Unresolved conflict can affect how a business operates and one of the worst ways this can affect businesses is by affecting the rate of client satisfaction and retention.
Ensuring effective communication to resolve conflict is therefore highly important, especially if a service business offers a niche service or product. To ensure effective communication, niche service providers must provide clear product information, and pay attention to any product concerns clients may have.
You can achieve this by providing regular updates and being transparent. Customers need to feel someone values and hears them, you effectively communicate, and reps actively listen to clients to ensure conflict is least likely to occur.
The Benefits of Communication for Conflict Resolution
Effective communication is an important element for the success and growth of a business. It is exchanging information clearly, outlining goals and expectations, and actively listening to each other to avoid miscommunication that can lead to conflict.
Constructive communication helps prevent conflict by firstly ensuring that people listen to understand what a person is saying, trying to understand their point of view, and where they are coming from, and not listening merely to respond.
Vital Elements for Effective Communication
- Being an active listener
- Ensuring clarity and going straight to your point
- Ensuring empathy and being an empathetic listener
- Being respectful at all times
- Pay attention to your body language
- Always offer feedback, during and after
- Effective communication requires one to be emotionally intelligent
It enhances one’s capacity to understand the information being relayed, and it builds trust. When a company nurtures a culture of effective communication, employees will feel valued and heard. It will build trust and decrease the chances of negative and ineffective communication taking place.
Employees will not fear conflict, and welcome chances for positive conflict as a chance to raise any issues they may have in a professional, courteous, and respectful manner. Improving employee satisfaction, productivity and morale, company culture, and employee loyalty and satisfaction.
Sure-fire Methods for Resolving Conflict
- Providing staff with training in communication and communication skills
- Conducting workshops and seminars on communication between employees and how to communicate effectively with customers and potential customers
- Encouraging honest and open dialogue with
- Developing a company culture of regular team meetings to check in with employees
Leveraging Technology for Improved Communication
Technology has presented companies with various ways to enhance communication and to decrease any potential communication barriers.
Presenting companies with improved ways to promote effective real-time communication. You can achieve this through using several tools, apps, and technological software.
Technological tools for communication have the potential to improve communication between employees, partners, and customers.
Leveraging technology will not only help improve communication but will also assist with building better relationships and ensuring that all parties involved communicate with clarity. Guaranteeing effective communication and reducing any communication breakdowns.
Tools to Leverage for Improved Communication
- Instant Messaging Tools: Slack, Discord, Flock, Telegram and Ryver
- Video Conferencing Tools: Zoom, Google Meet, Zoho Meeting and Microsoft Teams
- Project Management Tools:Monday.com, ClickUp, Asana, ZohoProjects, and Trello
- Collaboration Tools: Monday.com, Aha!, Bitrix24, Zoho Sprints, and Teamwork
- Employee Surveys: Elective, Deel, Perform Yard, ThriveSparrow and MitraTech
- Customer Surveys: SurveyMonkey, JotForm, TypeForm, Google Forms, and ZohoSurvey
- Knowledge Sharing Tools: Confluence, Google Workspace, Knowledge Owl, and BloomFire
- File Sharing Tools: Google Drive, Dropbox, DropBox Business, One Drive, Zoho Work Drive, Asana, and SugarSync
Pragmatic Ways for Managing Conflict
Effective conflict management and resolution is all about tackling head-on, any potential sources of conflict and preventing them from escalating.
It is also about employing preventative measures to make sure that when conflict does inevitably occur; you resolve it swiftly and constructively.
This ensures that any conflict or issues that may arise do not affect the work environment impact an organization’s or employees’ ability to meet its goals or negatively affect customer relationships.
To manage conflict effectively organization leaders may implement the following;
- Ensuring that you hear all parties by engaging in active listening and being empathetic to all parties involved
- Ensuring that communication is clear and calm to de-escalate the situation and to find common ground
- Working with all parties involved to find the source of the conflict
- Working together to come up with a solution where you satisfy all parties involved and are all on common ground
- Finally, it is important to follow up with all parties to make sure that the solution agreed upon is effective and working well for everyone
Case Study
Effective Conflict Resolution
Context: A case study focused on conflict resolution in the workplace published by Life Coach duo Joeel and Natalie Rivera highlights a common workplace conflict.
This conflict involves two employees who have been working on a project for several months. During the conflict, the two employees have disagreements about the direction of the project. This affected their productivity and led to an unpleasant working environment.
Effective steps for conflict resolution:
Joeel and Natalie propose employing the following steps to ensure effective conflict resolution;
- Active Listening; Motivate both parties to express their grievances. Ensure that both parties are actively listening and taking part fully.
- Identify Common Goals: You can guide both parties to recognize that their goals for the project are in alignment. Emphasizing the value to be gained from collaborating rather than disagreeing with each other.
- Fostering Empathy: It is important to encourage either party to consider the other’s perspective by putting themselves in each other’s shoes. This can help both parties understand where the other is coming from and lower their defenses encouraging openness to resolution.
- Brainstorming Solutions: You can encourage both parties to come up with solutions together. Analyzing potential risks and benefits for all proposed solutions brought to the table. This is a great way to show either party the benefits of working together and to remind them of why they work well together, and why they make a great team.
- Evaluate Options: Guide all parties to scrutinize all proposed solutions, considering the potential impact of each solution and to zero in on the benefits of them both. This is also a great way to remind either party of the core principles of building and maintaining a great working relationship, and how they’re working together to come up with solutions is helping them to develop a better working relationship.
- Negotiate and Compromise: You can guide both parties to find common ground and to negotiate to find a compromise that will work well for either party. This can even lead to a redistribution of tasks, a reframing of the project and its goals, and a change of the project’s deadline. This helps both parties recalibrate and move forward clear on the goals of the project, and most importantly, agreeing how you can implement tasks for the project.
- Implement and Review: Once you have reached a resolution, and both parties have resumed their duties under the new agreement, Team Leaders must ensure follow-up. Team Leaders must schedule regular follow-ups to check in and evaluate progress being made. It is also a good way to identify whether any further adjustments need to be made with the agreed-upon and to ensure that there are no further issues or grievances.
Results: Implementing the right interventions when there is workplace conflict can assist employees in resolving conflict and positively affect a company’s bottom line.
Implementing the above solutions assisted the two colleagues in achieving personal growth, breaking down communication barriers, and cultivating a more harmonious working relationship. This helped them grow professionally and also positively affected team dynamics. (lifecoachtraining, 2023)
The Long-Term Advantages of Conflict Resolution
- Greater customer satisfaction and guaranteed loyalty
- Improves employee morale, productivity, and collaboration
- It cultivates a stronger company culture and ensures a positive working environment
- Leads to employees’ personal growth and development
- Encourages employees to incorporate emotional intelligence when interacting with each other and customers increasing empathy, respect, and patience
- Decreases the chances for miscommunication and for misunderstandings to escalate
- Encourages an open-door policy where open communication is the cornerstone of all interactions and cultivates a culture where you value positive conflict
In Conclusion
Conflict resolution is an important element that ensures the growth and success of a business. You can achieve conflict resolution when businesses ensure that constructive communication underscores all interactions between employees and customers.
For businesses to ensure growth, and success and to have a great relationship with customers and employees alike, organizations must ensure to prioritize effective communication and offer conflict resolution training as regularly as possible. This is key to cultivating a work culture that values communication and does not shy away from raising concerns.
