I popped in to the post-office today to post a few parcels off with some “goodies” in them for friends.
At the counter next to me an old lady was showing one of the assistants an old newspaper with a really old photograph showing a scene from about 80 years or so ago. She was telling the assistant about how there were only two people left alive who remembered that event and how she wanted to post a copy to her son to show him.
The assistant listened to her, asked her questions about the scene, and expressed interest about various aspects of the story. They were still going when I left.
You could tell from the discussion that the old lady really appreciated someone just listening and paying attention to her. Amid all the impersonality of modern life, here was someone who was making her feel human and valuable again.
Does this kind of customer service have a payoff? An ROI? Will it increase loyalty or sales?
Quite frankly I don’t know. And I don’t need to know.
Life isn’t all about calculating whether you’ll get a payback from everything you do. We all owe a duty of care to our fellow human beings – especially the elderly. To try to calculate whether those actions will have a payoff is crass in the extreme. Just do them.
Apologies for going a bit off-topic. There’s no great sales or marketing learning in this story. No insights for professional services. But maybe something for us to thing about as human beings.
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I’m certain that this type of customer service does have a payoff. It clearly influenced you, for a start. You might be more supportive of your local post office than you would otherwise have been. The payoff may be indirect, but it will be there.
There’s a misconception that where we work we should be ‘businesslike’ – often meaning that we should be hard and cold. But our workplaces are great places to ‘do nice things for people’. It makes us feel better about where we work, and makes customers and colleagues happier to deal with us. It’s all part of putting meaning into the things we do. (Guy Kawasaki’s video is very good on this subject: http://www.goldsbrough.biz/make-meaning-and-youll-make-money )
It’s a great story Ian and emphasises that we are social animals. I believe that the majority of us NEED to help other people as part of our biological make up. Do a good deed and going the extra mile to help someone brings a sense of self worth is the best ROI you can ever have.
That’s a wonderful point Jayne. And, as was the impact on me in the story, doing a good deed makes others around you feel good too.
I’m sure you’re right Matthew. But on the other hand, in some ways I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to plan being nice to get a payoff. I want to be (and I want others to be) nice for the sake of being nice.
Like you, Ian, I wouldn’t “want to plan being nice to get a payoff”, but that wasn’t what I was suggesting. I meant that the workplace seems to be where many people switch off their normally kind natures – and I don’t think they should. I agree with Jayne – we need to be helpful. Unfortunately, organisation structures, management styles, policy manuals and the like often appear to conspire to remove our humanity.
Now that’s definitely true. Manuals & the like seem to stifle people’s humanity – but we seem to play along with it too.
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I believe that this does payoff in the long run because your building relationship and value in the customer’s eye. Word of mouth can be very powerful. Thanks for sharing