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Grounding customer understanding before explaining

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D3 — Supporting
Primary: Q2 — Discover/Negotiate: Establish Ground for Action
This session creates the space for your coachee to see how they can connect more effectively with their customers. Your role is to help them observe what is happening — not to tell them what to change.

1. Diagnosis

The agent moves into a complex explanation before confirming the customer has understood the foundational issue they raised first.

2. Behaviour Observations

What you might see or hear that points to this pattern.

  • The agent begins explaining a complex topic before confirming the customer's own concern has been acknowledged and understood.
  • The agent acknowledges the customer's point briefly but does not stay with the customer's issue long enough to ensure it is resolved before moving on.
  • When delivering explanations, the agent does not break them into smaller segments or check for understanding between each segment.

3. Session Objective

The objective of the session is to help the agent recognise that the customer must feel heard and understood on their own issue before they are ready to receive the agent's explanation. Help the agent build the habit of checking for genuine customer understanding at each stage before moving forward. Get the coachee to take personal responsibility for any failure of communication rather than attributing it to the customer's inability to understand.

4. Session Tactics

How to prepare for and structure the 45-minute call review.

Play a call where the agent moves into their explanation before the customer's own concern has been grounded out. Ask the agent whether they believe the customer understood the foundational issue before the agent attempted their next explanation. When the agent acknowledges the customer did not fully understand, discuss the principle that the customer must have their issue addressed first before they are ready to hear what the agent wants to explain. Introduce a framing technique: coach the agent to open a complex explanation by acknowledging it took time to understand themselves and inviting the customer to stop them if the explanation is unclear, positioning responsibility for confusion with the agent rather than the customer. Help the agent practise breaking an explanation into smaller chunks with a comprehension check after each chunk before proceeding.

5. GROW Experiments

Experiments the coachee might choose to try. These are offers, not prescriptions — the coachee selects what feels right for them.

Experiment 1

The agent will pause before moving into any explanation and check whether the customer's own concern has been fully understood, staying with that concern until the customer signals they are satisfied.

Experiment 2

The agent will open complex explanations by telling the customer that the topic took time to understand and inviting the customer to stop them if the explanation is unclear, taking ownership for any confusion.

Experiment 3

The agent will break explanations into smaller chunks and check for the customer's understanding after each chunk before continuing.