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The Encounter HabitComment on this newsletter at yastrow.com Each day, relationship-building encounters are the most important product you produce. Yes, this is true. Why? First, because "We" relationships are the true differentiators in today's business world. Differentiating your products and services is very difficult these days, because customers see ours as a "land of plenty," where one product can be substituted by another. Second, because most of us can impact our relationships much more readily on a day-to-day basis than we can impact our products. If you are a salesperson, you will have a much easier time today making your customer happy by building your relationship with him than you could by improving your product's specifications. If you are a real estate broker, it's much easier to build a relationship with a client than to change the prices of available properties. Even if you are a doctor, it's easier to impact your patient relationships today than it is to improve the efficacy of the latest drug treatments. You can make a better relationship easier than you can make a better product. We relationships are built one encounter at a time. Each time you come in contact with a customer, you have the opportunity to improve-- or degrade-- your relationship. This is something you can affect every day, at every moment, you are engaging with a customer. You do it by constantly monitoring how well you are integrating the three elements of a relationship-building encounter into your interaction:
I've been thinking a lot this past week about this minute-by-minute encounter management and self-awareness. I realized that this theme was woven in three blog posts I published over the last few days, each covering one of the three elements of an encounter:
When I teach people these principles of relationship-building encounters, they rarely resist the concept and, in fact, are able to give me clear examples from their own business lives of when they did, or did not, create relationship-building encounters. But... people admit to struggling with creating encounters on a regular basis. Why? Why don't we create encounters all the time, if we know how to do it, and we know it is important? When we don't create encounters and slip into relationship-eroding transactions, it's usually because we are not alert to the fact that we're missing one or more elements of the encounter:
Like so many important parts of life, creating relationship-building customer encounters takes practice. Practice leads to habit. Habit leads to progress. Progress leads to strong relationships. Strong relationships lead to business success. So how do we create the encounter habit? Pay attention, at all times during a customer interaction, to the state of your encounter.
One very important idea for this moment-by-moment attention to customer encounters is to recognize that you can always improve a customer interaction, at any point, no matter how well or how poorly it is going. If the encounter is in full-swing, use that as a chance to take it to an even higher level. On the other hand, if your interaction has degraded into transaction-land, don't give up. No matter how far down a customer interaction has slipped, you can use the 3 encounter elements-- engagement in the moment, conversation and uniqueness-- to help bring it back on track. As with any habit, the encounter habit takes practice. Use every encounter as a chance to improve. Remember, if you get 1% better at creating relationship-building encounters every day, you'll be twice as good in 72 days. (Relationship habits grow at a compound rate just like cash!) I'm speaking from experience here. I started researching and writing We four years ago today, on June 15, 2005. As I listened to hundreds of people tell me about their relationships, I saw this theme of encounters, and of the 3 encounter elements, emerge. It fascinated me, and I began to practice. I have a long way to go, but now, when I inadvertently end up with a transaction instead of an encounter, I can always look back and see exactly where things went awry. This puts me into a position to improve. Immediately. So look at every customer interaction as a practice in improving your ability to create encounters. Not only will the immediate encounter be better, your future encounters will be better, leading to better relationships and better business success. As they say in yoga, "practice makes practice." Develop the encounter habit, and you will find yourself, every day, in richer, more productive, more rewarding customer encounters.
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For a more detailed look at encounters, Download Encounters: The Building Blocks of We Relationships
Buy Steve's new book, We: The Ideal Customer Relationship In We, you will learn: We is both a manifesto and a how-to guide that will change the way you interact with customers... and change the way your customers think about you. More praise for We “When
Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention. He is at once a wonderful
storyteller, a sophisticated purveyor of ideas, and an effective change
agent. I think We is a superb book-and I am mesmerized in particular
by Yastrow’s critical differentiation of ‘experience’
and ‘engagement’. Bravo!” "This is a fundamental shift in thinking that offers up a what's-next-beyond
experience marketing." Buy We at Get More Steve Calling out the Conversation Slackers Relationships are like cockroaches More posts on creating relationship-building encounters 
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer." - Seth Godin Are processes or systems in your company making it hard to maintain your customer relationships? Orchestrate your customers' total experience by using the concepts in Steve's first book, Brand Harmony. Buy Brand Harmony at Helpful Links: See this newsletter in your browser |
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© 2009 Steve Yastrow. All rights reserved. |
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How to help your customers think, "We" instead of "Us and Them" about their relationship with you and your company.