When Do You Brighten A Room? - Curt Tueffert

It has been said that there are two kinds of people, those who brighten a room when they enter it, and those who brighten a room when they leave. The question is; “Which one are you?”

People bring things into the room, into a conversation, into a meeting, into a connection with our customers, vendors and fellow employees. Typically, they bring in an attitude. Attitude is usually the first thing that brightens a room on entering or exiting.

Have you ever been in a meeting where one of the attendees kills the flow with their facial expressions, body language or comments? They walk around like Tigger without his tail, like they just sucked on a lemon. There is a diagnosis for these types of people who brighten rooms when they leave; Emotionally Constipated! You know them; they roll their eyes at any and every positive message. Their sarcasm is cutting and hurtful beyond the light hearted words that are used for humor. The glass is always half empty. They have a world view of scarcity instead of abundance. They are quick with comments of what they cannot do instead of what they can do. If the diagnosis is emotional constipation what is cure? From this writer’s perspective, a good start is ATTITUDE.

Think about the meetings, the sales calls, the phone conversations with someone with a great attitude. It brightens the room when they enter the meeting, makes the sales call more engage, and builds a stronger connection on the phone. The best thing about attitudes is that they can change. The worst think about attitudes is that they can change. The good news is that we can have a powerful impact with the simple change of an attitude.

I Am Passionate About Customer Service! Are you? Since we are all in the customer service business, we have a choice. Are you passionate about it? Do you have an attitude that brightens a room when you discuss customer service, or are you so emotionally constipated that just the mention of customer service brings anger, resentment, bad experiences, and apathy?

Here is my secret to having a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) about almost anything. It comes from a speech by Lee Iacocca when Chrysler was in tough times. He addressed the crowd and made the comment “Yesterday ended last night.” Meaning – it really does not matter what happened in the past, today is a new day and a chance to brighten another room, to impact someone with a great, fresh, powerful, positive attitude.

Customer Experience 2.0 – A core value, THE competitive edge.

Customer experience is a sum total of the products, people, and processes they come in contact with when they create a relationship with you and your company. We are faced with a fresh new year, a new president, and a new (and challenging) economy. How will that impact customer experience? Here are 4 Great Customer Experience Insights for 2009.

Insight #1: Without Customers We Don’t Have A Business. We Have A Hobby (Peppers and Rogers, Return on Customer). Customers are more and more adept at differentiating value and price, service and delivery, and other decision points to align with partners like you. More products are becoming commodities, customers are bombarded with marketing messages, and information is just a few keystrokes and web pages away. Everyone has to strive for the best customer experience regardless of the economic times. We all impact the experiences of all our customers.

Insight #2: The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing. The Chinese term wei gee portrays the dual nature of a crisis; Danger being one element and Opportunity the other. Customers are being challenged right now, they’re cutting back, and you can either prepare for danger and ride it out or advance and seize the opportunities as they present themselves. Our collective Customer Experience will present more opportunities to delight our customers in these times. Front line sales people, customer service professionals, implementation teams, service repair technicians, accounting collections and payables, and all levels of management can choose to create great Customer Experience touch points…daily. The upside is adding customer and keeping the ones we have. The downside of not providing great Customer Experiences is the loss of customer trust, and eventually the loss of customers (see point #1)

Insight #3: The Time To Get Creative Is Now. As budgets shrink and purchasing departments take more control of the price/value proposition, you have to get creative in how you position your company in the minds and purchase requisitions of customers. By creative I mean nimble. Can we present an alternative solution to meet the customer’s needs? Can we listen more and talk less? Can we practice an increased degree of empathy in all of our customer’s departments? They are under pressure to perform and therefore, so are we. The more we can strengthen our value proposition, the greater chance we will get to solve our customer’s challenge.

Insight #4: The Way To Our Customer’s Heart Is Through Our Employees. When our employees are not engaged in the customer experience, our customers know; yes they are that smart. “While you can make some customers happy through brute force, you can not sustain great customer experience unless your employees are brought-in to what you’re doing and are aligned with the effort. If employees have low morale, then getting them to “wow” customers will be nearly impossible”. (CxP Law #4 – 6 Laws of Customer Experience). It is everyone’s responsibly and mission to help each other get grounded in why we are here, how we can create awesome customer experience, and then do it again and again. Walt Disney said “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

People are getting more impatient. Google.com drives the demand for “I want it now.” An article mentioned a Gen-Y teenager who said the problem with Mc Donald’s is it’s just too slow. We are faced with both employees and customers who expect and often demand a great Customer Experience. Let’s give it to them; today, tomorrow, and everyday after that.