The Power of a Smile

There are few customer service tools as powerful as a smile.  Smile when you are dealing with a customer and it will make a difference.  I don't care if you are talking with them face-to-face, talking on the phone, or drafting an e-mail.  If you are smiling, you are providing better service.  It is virtually impossible to write an angry letter or e-mail if you are genuinely smiling.  And if you can't genuinely smile, smile anyway.  It will infect your mood too!

Have a nice day!  :)

When 8-year-olds grow up

My wife and I recently attended one of my daughter's choral concerts at her high school.  It was the first such concert of the year.  The music was fantastic.  But my wife and I were floored by the number of younger siblings of our children's friends were in the choir and had grown-up and no longer the 8-year olds that we remembered them as.  Now they were tall, mature young adults.  In our minds, they were still 8-years old because they were the last we had seen them.

The same is true for your customers and former customers.  Most customers remember your company as it was when they last saw you.  If you have grown, improved or changed, they won't know that know that if they last worked with you before that growth or those improvements and changes.  The challenge is to stay in front of your most valuable customers and stakeholders so they know who you are today.

Thoughts from a weekend conference...

I participated in a panel this weekend on the value of communications professionals to a school district.  Some thoughts and reflections from that experience:

• If your organization is facing a crisis and your communications team is also in crisis, they haven't done their job.  A good communications professional anticipates and plans for crises.  You may not be able to predict what type of crisis you will face, but you should know that eventually you will face one.
• Double or triple redundancy on technolgy all too often isn't redundant but event-saving.
• In conferences with concurrent sessions, you should remember that each member of your audience has made a choice to attend your session.  Treat them with the respect they deserve by choosing to spend time with you.  Give them content that is worthwhile, actionable, and practical.
• Audiences will almost always surprise you with how carefully they are listening.  I have almost never faced a Q&A session where someone will ask you about some detail you mentioned 35 PowerPoint slides ago!
• Communications is something everyone can and should do.  Managing communications is something few can do well.
• The best way to connect with an audience is to know your material and believe in what you are saying.  The second best way is to tell jokes or show cartoons!

Ripple Effects

The other night I got yet another fundraising phone call from a theater company with which I had recently been a subscriber. Much to the chagrin of my wife, I have not yet developed the "Thank them and hang up" reflex that she uses so well with these types of calls.

The woman on the call started her pitch, and I interrupted her and explained in reasonably general terms, why we wouldn't be donating.

Then something happened that made this call blog worthy. She listened. She responded to what I said with kindness, interest and empathy. (What I said to her was not dramatic or tragic in any way.) While she tried gently to offer another donation option, she did it in a way that made me feel that she understood what I had just told her. She made me believe, if only for a few seconds, that I wasn't just talking to a script on the other side of the phone. She acted like, and treated me like, a human being. Isn't it interesting that that makes the call worthy of comment?

I know that because of the way she responded, I am more likely to give to that organization sooner than I would otherwise. I know that because of the way she responded, I have a more favorable impression of that organization.

Even the little things we do have ripple effects. Mind your ripples!

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