• I wasn’t careful enough about disguising this. At the end of the assignment, we both agreed to go our separate ways
• I have always believed in delivering superior service, but in this case I had made myself appear familiar.
Some years ago, while working in the advertising industry, I made a mistake. I was dealing with a client who was not a nice man, and who thought he knew more about Marketing than he did. I didn’t warm to him and I wasn’t careful enough about disguising this. At the end of the assignment, we both agreed to go our separate ways. His last words to me were “you might have made me feel like a client.”
That struck home, and I’ve never forgotten how that made me feel. I have always believed in delivering superior service, but in this case I had made myself appear familiar. I had fallen victim to hubris. I do hope that my clients today are benefitting from the self-reflection that followed. I’m sure they will give me fulsome feedback when they read this.
A very senior HR person, with whom I now collaborate, made a very good point at a leadership seminar last week. ‘After you are gone,’ she said, ‘no one will remember what you said and did. They will only remember how you made them feel.’ And the more I explore the subject of leadership inside organisations, the more I realise that the emotional dimension is paramount. How you make people feel at the beginning of a meeting, for example, determines the resultant energy level and productivity. The problem is that very few aspirant leaders have any idea that emotion is a determinant of success. Few of them really get to engage with the Lions of African business, and when they do they are unlikely to touch upon this subject. There are exceptions, but most of our current leadership models were raised in westernised corporate environments of the 1980’s. The emotional dimension then was suppressed - you had to be a tough guy to win.
At the same seminar we discussed common failures in customer experience delivery - potentially an inexhaustible topic of conversation. We talked about our own day-to-day experiences and, regardless of the situation, we instinctively fed back what they made us feel. Consequently the language we used was strong: frustrated, disappointed, shocked, infuriated and exasperated were common terms in the dialogue.
The big problem with producing a negative emotional response is that it is permanent. It never really goes away. Indeed it resurfaces whenever similar situations are encountered with other organisations. In fact, it colours the way in which customers approach brands and companies. We expect customer service in broadband fibre providers to be terrible: so we engage them aggressively. We don’t even acknowledge when they buck the trend, we are looking for them to fail.
Chris Harrison leads The Brand Inside
www.thebrandinside.com