DON'T LOSE
THE PERSON IN THE TRANSACTION
I walked
into a bank the other day to withdraw a large sum of cash. There was hardly
anyone in the bank so I walked right up to a waiting teller. I presented
my completed withdrawal slip and two pieces of identification. The teller
efficiently processed the transaction and in no time at all I walked out
with a bulging wallet. But although the process had been painless and
I had got the result I was looking for, as I walked down the street I
felt disappointed. What I had experienced was nothing more than an impersonal
transaction. Something was missing.
You never want to forget that business is first and foremost a social
activity between two or more people. It is not a customer dealing with
a company; it is two human beings interacting with each other, if only
for a brief moment. People are social animals, and there are certain things
they like to experience during any exchange. They like, for example, to
hear people use their name. This is one reason I found my banking experience
to be disappointing. I had given the bank teller two pieces of identification
and she hadn’t used my name, not even once. How easy it would have been,
and in doing so she would have turned an impersonal transaction into a
personalised one.
Another thing that people look for is a friendly response. It might
just be a smile. A greeting is even better: “Good morning sir, and is
your day going well?” Now, some people would think this was false. After
all, does the teller really care whether your day is going well? You might
be worried that if your staff started saying this, would it become a hollow
phrase like, “Have a nice day,” and that would irritate your customers.
Whether that happened would depend on whether your staff really do care.
If they do not, they shouldn’t say anything. As Groucho Marx used to say,
the two most important things in life are honesty and sincerity, and if
you can fake those, you’ve got it made! But they should care because your
business has no future without customers.
Your staff could even go one step further and engage in a little small
talk with the customer. Human beings expect to talk to others when they
are close to them. That is why people feel awkward in a lift. There they
are, very close to other human beings and they don’t say anything. It
makes people feel invisible or ignored. How much better my banking experience
would have been if the teller had made a comment such as, “Looks like
you’re going to have some fun with this!” If she had said it with a twinkle
in her voice, I would have laughed. That would have enriched the experience
because people like to laugh. Ironically, it might have helped her to
help me more effectively. I would have replied, “Oh no, it’s not for me.
It is for my son who is going to buy a car he has seen advertised in the
paper.” Knowing this, she might have been able to find a solution better
than carrying a wallet full of cash around. But even if she couldn’t,
the fact she noticed what I was doing and talked to me about it would
have made me feel more than just another customer with another transaction
to process.
Is what I experienced at the bank what your customers experience at
your place of business? Do your people make a habit of using the customer’s
name? Do they smile at each customer and greet them at the beginning of
the transaction. Do they try to have a pleasant exchange that is a little
more meaningful than, “Have a nice day?” And here’s one right off the
wall, do they try to help the customer enjoy themselves during the transaction?
Have you told your front-line staff how important it is to do these things?
It isn’t difficult to get staff to do them, they just have to see that
you are serious about this. How does McDonalds get every pimply-faced
kid who works for them on this planet to ask if you would like fries with
that? Because they fire them if they don’t! I wonder if your staff would
change the way they treated their customers if they knew their future
depended on it? I bet they would.
The crazy thing is, even if you don’t get tough over these issues,
your staff’s future (and yours too, for that matter) is dependent on the
experience your customers get. So it might be in everyone’s best interests
if they treated customers as people, and not simply as buyers. Using the
customer’s name, greeting them, flashing a smile, and exchanging a little
chit chat during the transaction might be useful things to do, don’t you
think?
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