Make friends with the world and its peoples

My favorite type of review for any service professional is when the customer writes:

She made me feel like we had been friends for ages.

Have you ever had that feeling before? Where the first time you met someone, you felt like you’d known him all your life?

This special brand of interaction is fascinating to me. When strangers are able to cut the formalities and start connecting for real, and the conversation flows like taffy being pulled, it makes a strong argument for the existence of magic.

And while it’s not the kind of experience that can be reverse engineered, there are some patterns worth noting.

If you scan a few dozen reviews, for example, customers tend to use the same kinds of words when describing their service provider.

Calm, smile, laugh, happy, warm genuine, instantly, comfortable.

These traits are not specific to one personality or profession. Some may be harder for people at work to generate than others, but overall, these are all standard customer service best practices.

My favorite review was a customer of a car dealership who noted about her salesman:

Refreshing that you didn’t have to sweat when your back was turned to him.

That reveals more about the automotive industry than the employee, but that’s another story.

The lesson here is something that’s been a business philosophy of mine for many years.

People buy people first. Companionship is one of the few feelings in the world that drives a people’s focus into the present moment, narrows their awareness down to the activity of interacting itself, and makes them feel like time has disappeared.

No wonder customers said they felt like they’d know the service prover all their lives.

Pwc recently surveyed a sample of fifteen thousand people from twelve countries on the modern customer experience. Their research discovered that after the trait of convenience, friendly service was what people valued most in their customer experience.

Nearly half of them would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience. And sixty percent of all consumers said they’d stop doing business with a brand if the service they received was not friendly.

Now are you convinced that every employee at every business should wear a nametag?

If you want more loyal customers, make friends with the world and its peoples.

Remember what it felt like the last time you worked with someone who made you feel like you had been friend for ages, and see if you can’t pay that companionship forward.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What makes buying from you a relaxing experience?