tcomm87

Communication Accommodation Theory

Communication Accommodation Theory is adjusting our way of communication to someone else’s needs.  If someone has a hard time hearing we tend to speak louder or if someone doesn’t speak good English we speak slower.   I recently got a job at an inbound call center that receives calls for Comcast and cable and billing questions.  One day I received a call from someone that I had trouble understanding.  I noticed that she had a Spanish accent and broken English.  I thought that I would try and help her better understand me by speaking slower and a little bit louder.  However by doing so I did not help the situation at all because she still did not understand me because of the language barrier and she also thought that I was talking down to her.  She ended up getting upset and hanging up on me and I didn’t even solve her problem.  what I learned from that experience is to never try to help understanding by making it sound like you are just trying to talk down to a person.  Try and speak normal to a person so it shows to them that you basically do understand what they are saying and always restate the questions to get on the same page as that person.