Sunday, June 14th, 2009
Every day we’re on the phone with people, and we notice they are going through emails, or surfing the web, while talking with us. Everyone I speak with has this experience, regularly.
How do we notice this? Because we notice that the person we are speaking with is not engaged with us. We notice that the flow of conversation is broken. We notice that the other person has no idea what we just said. We hear the clicks of their keyboard.
I wrote a post back in December called, Are you here? in which I encouraged readers to call people out if they are not paying attention during a conversation, particularly a phone conversation.
My brother Phil and I were talking tonight, and we were trying to decide on a clever way to do this. We were looking for a short, powerful phrase to say to people that would have the meaning of, “Hey, are you with me? I’d love it if you would stop looking at your computer screen and focus on our conversation!”
We first thought about yelling out, “Slimy!” because for years we’ve pronounced the word “emails” backwards as “slimy,” as in, “I’m going to go fire up my laptop and check my slimy.” But, I know, that’s way to obscure. (Oh, did I forget to mention, Phil and I have a very strange habit of speaking backwards with each other? We’ve been doing it since we were little kids. Can you see how “emails” would be “slimy?”)
Do you have any great suggestions for this call out?
It might be as simple as, “Are you with me?”
Or, “Is now a good time to talk?”
Or, “Would you like me to wait?”
Or, “If you’re transcribing this conversation, be sure to spell my name correctly. It’s S-T-E ..”
Or, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” just to test if they are listening.
I’d love your suggestions. (And, of course, if you ever notice me doing “slimy” while we’re on the phone, you have my permission to call me out, with whatever phrase you want.)
Posted in Conversation | 10 Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Don’t just be your job. Be you. Be irreplaceable.
This is a post I published on tompeters.com today. When creating relationship-building encounters with a customer, it’s critical that you interact in a way that is unique to you, and clearly you. After all, there is no one else like you.
Posted in Customer Encounters | 3 Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
It’s Day 2 of my 17-day odyssey, sharing ideas with people from Seattle to Mauritius.
I’m writing while on a flight from Seattle to Newark, 25 rows behind Rudy Giuliani, who is sitting in the aisle seat in the first row of first class. Rudy got on the plane early, and did a great job of keeping his eyes glued to his BlackBerry as people stared when they crowded past him. (Update for those of you who read yesterday’s post: After much hassle, I got my suitcase back from United Airlines. And, I stayed calm throughout it all.)
One irony of my travels is that, although I’m traveling alone, I’m constantly engaged in conversations. Conducting interactive workshops, side conversations with people during these events, engaging in a stream of phone calls as I move from place to place, chatting with people in lines at the airport; I’m always talking with people.One thing I always try to be aware of is the quality of the conversation I’m in.
How fluid is the dialogue? Is there too much monologue? Are we connecting and sharing? Are we both present? I grade myself pretty hard. If you’re speaking with me, and I drift into monologue, you can bet that I know it and I’ll chastise myself later. If you catch me spacing out, not paying attention to what you’re saying, you should be confident that I caught myself also. (Even though I’m spacing out.)
In fact, if you’re ever speaking with me, in person or by phone, and you think my quality of conversation is lacking, I invite you to call me out on it.I think of this self-monitoring as “The Conversationometer”, and I think it is a really healthy tool to use, all the time. In every conversation, especially those with customers, continuously monitor the quality of your dialogue. Is the dialogue fluid?
Am I listening, and responding based on what I’m hearing? Are we locked in together in true dialogue, or are we committing “monologue disguised as dialogue?”In an interview on page 83 of my book We, Karyn Kedar uses the metaphor of a sailboat tacking with the wind to explain how to keep a conversation on track. You’re paying attention, constantly feeling the wind, and making adjustments as needed to move swiftly through the water.Why is it so important to self-monitor your contribution to a conversation? Because your customer is also monitoring the quality of the conversation.
Don’t believe that you can get away with monologue, or weak dialogue, without being found out. Use The Conversationometer to ensure that you are totally engaged in genuine dialogue with your customer.When I witness someone entrenched in monologue, it often seems like they aren’t even aware of what they’re doing. They get on a roll, blabbing away, without even noticing that they’re not really in a conversation. I want to hold an aural mirror up to their ears (that’s a bizarre image) and say, “Listen to yourself!” Which is ironic, because most of the time no one else is listening to the monologuer.The most important asset your business has is its relationships, and true conversation is the blood flow of relationship-building encounters.
Think of The Conversationometer as being like one of those heart monitoring machines in the hospital. Don’t flatline.
Posted in Conversation | 6 Comments »
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Last night began a 17-day odyssey, with travels taking me to speaking events in Seattle, New Jersey, Mauritius (look on your globe a few inches to the right of Madagascar), San Francisco (two events), and then up to Wisconsin with my band to play three times over a weekend. I’m expecting 64 hours in the air over the next two and half weeks, in addition to about 16 hours in airports and 12 hours getting to and from airports. I’ll make it home for a few odd nights along the way, staying just long enough for my geriatric dog, Puck, to get confused.
I’m excited about the work on these trips, but a bit concerned about dealing with all of the travel. While on the flight this last evening, I was thinking that the best way to deal with mega-travel like this is to treat it like yoga. Relax, be present, don’t be anxious about things happening in other places. Focus on the moment I’m in right now. Avoid thinking, “When are we gonna get there?” and don’t let any travel hassles shake my peace of mind. The four-hour flight from Chicago to Seattle was enjoyable; I settled into my seat, got some work done, read a bit, chilled out.
Well, this peaceful mentality was tested 10 minutes after arriving in baggage claim in Seattle, when it became clear that my suitcase (full of today’s presentation materials) didn’t make it on the flight. But just as my blood started to boil, I caught myself. Yes, I think United Airlines is inept for making me wait in baggage claim, and then in a baggage service line, when they’ve known that my bag was lost for the last three hours. Why not send a message to me while I’m on the flight? Why not give me $100 to buy some stuff instead of saying “Government regulations give the airlines 24 hours to find a bag before requiring remuneration?” Why not apologize?
But I didn’t get upset. I stayed calm. Actually, I wasn’t calm for the first 30 seconds after the United agent confirmed that my bag was still in Chicago, but I caught myself. I remembered that I have tons of travel in the next few weeks, and I don’t want to let these hassles interrupt my peace of mind. This is not my normal reaction; I’m embarrassed to think about how many times I’ve lost my cool in airports. But, hey, much of life is about practice and progress.
So why does this matter, beyond me keeping my personal stress levels down?
We Relationships are the great business differentiators in our new economy. It’s very difficult to create lasting product advantages, and even more difficult to create lasting service advantages these days, because, if you are successful, your competitors are constantly trying to copy what you do and steal your customers. But where your customers may see your products and services as replaceable with those from competitors, a personal We Relationship with you is unique, because it can’t be copied by the competition.
One of the biggest hurdles to creating relationship-building encounters is how the chaos in our lives makes it difficult to be fully present as we engage with our customers. Here’s a common scenario: In a workshop, I’ll ask attendees if they can tell when someone they’re speaking with on the phone is simultaneously checking email or surfing the web. Invariably, people say they can discern this behavior, because it is obvious the other person is distracted. Next, I ask them if they will commit that, for one week, they will not look at their computer screens during phone calls. Just as invariably, people laugh and say, “No way, I know I can’t do it. I’m so busy, I can’t resist looking at emails while I’m on the phone so I can get two things done at once.”
Now, take the same scenario, and add to it distractions from the BlackBerry, project deadlines, problems with other customers, personal issues, etc. If we let these distractions get to us, we will not be able to engage our customers fully, and we will end up creating relationship-eroding transactions instead of relationship-building encounters.
Think about that. As the distractions and stresses of modern business life increase, we are less able to have relationship-building encounters, at a time when relationships are the most valuable product we create.
As I wrote in this newsletter, We Are Not Multi-Taskers, “At any given moment, at places all over the planet, millions of interactions between buyers and sellers are devolving into mere transactions, missing the chance to be relationship-building encounters, because the people in the interaction are not fully present.” (For more on the idea of being present during customer interactions, see Chapter 2 in We or my free ebook, Encounters.)
So, if I let United Airlines’ ineptitude take over my brain, how will I be able to engage the audience to whom I will be speaking a few hours from now? How will I be able to be fully present on the important call I need to have with a client before my speech?
As the Buddhists say, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” You will be distracted. People, and your BlackBerry, will interrupt you. Thoughts about one customer will enter your mind as you speak with another. People you work with will piss you off, and your blood will start to boil. United will lose your bag, too.
But remember, relationship-building encounters are the most important thing you produce every day. The more you can focus on the customer with whom you are speaking, right now, and ignore the distractions, the more successful you will be.
Posted in Customer Encounters | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
To create a relationship-building encounter, your customer must feel that the interaction he shares with you is fresh, unscripted, one-of-a-kind. He has the sense that this moment has never happened before, and will never happen again.
This is difficult for many people. Our works forces us to retell the same stories and deliver the same information time and again, and we often slip into recitation mode, sounding like the 2nd grader dutifully delivering her lines at the Thanksgiving assembly.
I downloaded The Great Gatsby to my Kindle yesterday, just because I was in the mood for the music of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sentences; those in this book are poetic, symphonic and beautiful. Narrator Nick Carraway describes the “low thrilling voice” of his cousin Daisy Buchanan in this way:
“It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.“
Wow. Try that! Tomorrow, as you interact with customers or colleagues, make your voice and its words so fresh sounding that the listener’s ear “follows up and down,” creating the feeling that this is the only time in history you will say this, and that this is the only person to whom you will ever say it.
Posted in Customer Encounters | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Today I’ve been thinking a lot about recalibrating the approach to customer interactions.
The day started off with a meeting with a client about a potential project. Our discussion explored how this very successful company can develop more business from current customers, especially in these tough times where it is harder to find new customers.
As we talked, it became clear that the best answers lie not in more lucrative promotions, better offers or a new loyalty program. It’s much more fundamental than that. Interacting with customers during this time of economic uncertainty and turmoil requires, more than ever, an approach based on the customer interaction principles that have obsessed me for years.
- It’s not about customer service. It’s about the relationship-building encounter. Customer service is not what you strive for; it has become basic hygiene. (Yes, some companies still don’t brush their teeth.) The goal of every interaction between a person in your company and a customer is to make sure that the relationship with the customer is better at the end of the interaction than it was at the beginning.
- Stop shouting already! People hear Brand Harmony. This is the worst time to dial up the brute-force marketing techniques, trying to out-shout, out-promote and out-sizzle your competition. The world is way too noisy and your customers are way too scrutinizing. Interact with customers in a way that matches how they form impressions of you: By creating a strong sense of Brand Harmony that communicates a clear, compelling, comprehensive story.
How much better would your business be if your organization, with the talent of virtuosos, adhered to these principles?
Posted in Brand Harmony, Customer Encounters, Recalibration, Thrive in a tough economy | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 20th, 2009
A friend was leafing through the pages of my book We yesterday, stopping on page 90 to comment on this sentence:
“No matter what the interaction is, it is always possible to make it less formulaic and scripted.”
I don’t care how many times the hotel clerk has checked people in, I don’t care how many times the doctor has described a condition, I don’t care how many times you have been a certain type of situation, it is possible – and necessary – to make the person you interact with feel that this is a unique, fresh, unscripted encounter that you have prepared just for her, as if it were the first time you have done it.
Be aware today of freshness. Notice if people are replaying used scripts as they talk to you, notice if you are doing the same. Notice how easy it is for you to discern if someone is formulaic and scripted, think of how easy it must be for others to know when you are.
Be fresh! (For this kind of freshness, you won’t get slapped.)
Posted in Customer Encounters, Steve's Books | 4 Comments »
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Last month I wrote a newsletter article called “We are not multi-taskers.” We are really only capable of doing one conscious thing at a time, and this tendency to glance at the Blackberry or surf the web while talking with someone ensures that none of those actions will be done well. My point: One of the key ingredients of a relationhip-building encounter is being 100%, fully engaged in the moment you are sharing with your customer.
I just read this article on multi-tasking from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, who I always find interesting. How about this statistic Dr. Mercola quotes: Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.
One of the greatest challenges to creating relationship-building encounters with customers is actually just being there, fully-engaged with your customer. Attempting to multi-task doesn’t mean that you are successful doing it.
Posted in Customer Encounters, Speeches & events | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Today’s issue of my newsletter is called Moments with Presence.
The basic idea: Your customers live half a million minutes each year, and remember only a few of them. Will they remember the moments they share with you?
Please share your comments!
Posted in Customer Encounters | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
A day in Warsaw by myself helps me practice one of the key skills needed to build customer relationships …
(The video is actually only a bit more than six minutes.)
Posted in We relationships | 7 Comments »
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