Like Mother Said
I can hear my mother telling me now, “If only we could see ourselves as others see us.” She
would say this to teach me to look at what I was doing from the other person’s viewpoint, hoping
I would see the need to change my behaviour. Is this good advice for business leaders too?
Recently, a client, a national company with branches throughout New Zealand, asked me to run a seminar
for their branch managers. Since this would be the second time I had spoken to this group, the CEO and
I knew that even if I used new material, the managers would think (a) we have heard all this before,
and (b) we are doing a great job of looking after our customers anyway. So, we organised someone to
mystery shop each branch by telephone, record the calls and play them at the conference.
At the workshop, I asked people to think of the best customer experience they had ever had and to
tell me what made it so good. I wrote their comments on the whiteboard. I told them we should, as Mum
would have said, “see ourselves as others see us.” Then I told them what we had done and
played the telephone calls.
Within three minutes, the managers went from being interested to being horrified. People squirmed
in their seats and eyes darted about the room, seeking a place to hide. For nearly an hour there was
deathly silence broken only by the odd groan or outbreak of forced laughter. After the last call, we
broke for morning tea and people filed out of the room wordlessly.
Most of the calls would have resulted in a poor customer experience for the caller, although the odd
one was good, but they were no different from what your customers probably also experience. Because
we do not see ourselves as our customers see us, we think we are doing a good job. Most of us, for example,
are happy if we have answered the phone in three rings and are not too concerned if extends to four
or even five rings. We do not think twice if we then transfer the customer to another member of staff
who also takes four or five rings to pick up. In fact, we often do not bother to see if the person has
picked up, because we know if they are not there, the phone will divert to voice mail. I can tell you,
it is very painful to listen to a recording of that happening.
The CEO and I were a little apprehensive about the response to this session, but over morning tea
I could hear the people accepting what they had heard was often their customers’ reality and it
was not good enough. When they returned to the room, they formed small groups and identified how the
customer experience could be improved. The discussions were animated and the output impressive.
After the groups reported their conclusions, each person wrote a plan outlining what they were going
to do in the coming 12 months. Nobody objected when they were then asked to read out their plan. Their
enthusiasm for improving the customer experience in their branch was palpable.
Why not give your staff a chance to see themselves as their customers see them? If you are a small
business with a handful of staff, you do not need to hire a company to do the mystery shopping. You
can buy an attachment at your local electronics store that will allow you to record phone calls on your
computer. Then get a friend or family member to call your company and pretend to want to buy something.
Get them to ask lots of questions about your products and services including, “Why should I buy
this from you and not one of your competitors?”
At a staff meeting, set the scene by asking your staff to think of the best customer experience they
have had and make a list of what they think made the experiences so good. Tell them what you have done
and why. Make the point this has been done to find ways to do things better. Explain you are not trying
to embarrass anyone and that anything that was done poorly could have been done by anyone in the company,
including you. Then play the calls and ask them to use what they had said made a great customer experience
to judge how well the calls were handled. This is important because that way the criteria for judging
the calls comes from them not you. Finish the session by asking people to tell you what needs to be
improved and what they personally are going to do to help make these improvements. Write it all down
and follow it up with them individually over the next few weeks, making sure you ask what you can do
to help them make these changes.
Mum was right, we might all behave differently if we could see ourselves as others see us.
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