Relationships are everywhere, especially in business. We sometimes think that transactions are the main activities of business, but the main activity of business actually centers around relationships – how to build relationships, create relationships, manage relationships. And relationships are based on connections. If people connect, they can create, find or build value. Relationships grow if people come together to create something, like value or solve problems. This is why customers and businesses need to work together to create value and mutual benefit.
We also can’t forget that individual people are included the customer segments and are employees in a business. In the end, we do business with people, not entities.
If relationships are so important, then you may be wondering why don’t we hear about them more often? This is why I’m curious how many people feel that their companies have great relationships with their customers and help their customers achieve their goals. I’m curious how many marketers and company leaders feel that connections are made and results achieved. I’m curious where people’s customer relationship challenges lie.
There is branding and then there are gimmicks. Although the video clip above implies otherwise, Gypsy Rose Lee wasn’t known for a gimmick, but instead, her brand. She was an amazing performer, a “classy stripper” if you will, who took just enough off to be sexy while having an intellectual conversation with her audience. She left her audience wanting more intellectually and, well, you know. (Check out the video at the bottom of the article to learn more.) Some considered her to be a brilliant intellectual.
Here’s a great example of her talent taking her gloves off.
And you can see, the appeal of Gypsy Rose Lee wasn’t just taking her gloves off; it was about how she took her gloves off. It was distinctive and unique. No one else removed their gloves quite like Gypsy Rose Lee (then again, no one really did anything quite like Gypsy Rose Lee).
Is there proof that Gypsy had a brand and not just a gimmick? Most definitely! In 1948, the Tulsa State Fair was in shambles. The churches and schools were calling a boycott on the fair for it’s cheap, low-brow, inappropriate entertainment. There were swindlers and sketchy behavior all around. To clean it up, they hired Miss Gypsy Rose Lee to be the main attraction. Everyone considered her show to be clean for kids and an draw for adults. It was – it turned the State Fair around in one night.
Now, if she were a regular stripper, I doubt she would have gotten such a gig. So, how did Gypsy use branding versus a gimmick? And how can you identify one from the other?
A gimmick is a tool used to get results. How it works and why you need it has little, if anything, to do with your brand. It doesn’t complement your brand, it doesn’t reflect your company’s values, it doesn’t mirror what you want to communicate in actions or words. Often, gimmicks come with an intrusive user experience that forces users to take action in some way. Gimmicks in show business were used to grab the attention of an audience. They were disruptive, a spectacle. But gimmicks (like a light show, including an animal or a prop) never got you a following. Brands did.
Branding and a branded experience exhibits the personality of your organization. In the case of Gypsy Rose Lee, it was Gypsy’s stage personality. In the case of a company, the action would be a reflection and complement the brand values. It wouldn’t be disruptive. It would be an experience that made sense, felt natural, and enticed someone to build a relationship with the organization.
Examining gimmicks
To illustrate how gimmicks work, let’s look at an example like a signup form in a lightbox. These are often used to gather email addresses from site visitors. It can be easy – or difficult – for a user to remove this lightbox from his or her experience to read the article. Note that these lightboxes can appear on desktop or mobile experiences, and on mobile experiences, they can be difficult, if not impossible, to remove without at least a screen refresh. (A lightbox on a desktop can easily be removed with a tap outside of the box, on an “x” in the corners, or a cancel/skip link/button. On a phone, there are times when the lightbox close button or link isn’t in view and the user can’t scroll.) Lightboxes on mobile devices can lead to a frustrating user experience where the user most likely won’t return because he can’t get the content he wants.
Popups and lightboxes had their moment years ago. Today, I think everyone finds them annoying, but they are still in use because they are effective. One person got 1,375% increase in conversion – that’s a lot. But let’s be honest, they aren’t just disruptive – they are a gimmick and marketing tool. A popup/lightbox doesn’t support anyone’s brand. What brand is so obnoxious that it jumps into people’s faces, forcing them to take an action? And depending on the device you are on, force a user to take an action with no option to exit. Sure, we could equate a popup being like someone asking, “Would you like fries with that?” Or, “Are you sure you want to give me your email address?” But are they, really? Most popups have a single purpose – to collect email addresses so you can send emails to that list and hopefully increase sales (if everything goes well) based on a numbers game. And users know this.
One use that I agree makes sense for these lightboxes is for content subscription sites. If you have already read your “free” allocation of articles, the site will display a lightbox popup and start to “request” (i.e., pressure) you to pay. Now, I think people pay for content if the site offers a valuable perspective on the world. I have an HBR subscription because I think it’s valuable. Same with the The Economist.
I will signup because I see the message: “if you don’t signup/get a login/other action, you can’t read this content you want to read.” The purchase decision revolved around the question: “why do I want to read this content?” Sometimes, the question is, “how badly do I need to read this content?” because the situation may be, “do I need this content for any reason besides just wanting to read it?” Usually I need to read such an article for work. The next question I ask myself is, “how many times do I think I’ll read from the publication in the future?” If the answer is many, then I usually subscribe. Otherwise, is the article really worth the trouble?
I don’t have subscriptions for most newspapers because I just don’t read them enough. Do I give them my email address? No. I don’t want to pay. I don’t want an update. I find news by visiting specific sites that I choose to read. Paying for content is not always worth it to me.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
But to be clear, I provide my email address or purchase not because I got the popup/lightbox; I shared my email address with an organization because I found value in the content and felt it was worth paying for it. I think that’s true for other users as well.
If you get a lot of email addresses you’ll make a lot of money. Does that sound logical to you?
Based purely on a numbers game, the more email addresses you get, in theory, the more you may make in sales. But I would argue that if you don’t have your brand well-developed and offer value to a site visitor, all the email addresses in the world won’t bring you a sale. By using a lightbox form you are assuming that people will provide their email address and want what you sell. If you think about it, that means you hold your brand and content in very high regard, so much so that you will convince people to buy what you are selling after giving you their email address and reading a few blog posts.
And by using this method of email marketing, you are acting ridiculously confident in your ability to convert users to purchase through email only. You are believing that a handful of emails will get people on your list to spend hundreds of dollars.
I’ll be frank…That’s just crazy-talk!
People buy from you because your product solves a problem they are having, a problem that they are afraid of not having fixed for whatever reason.People don’t buy from you because they got your email after signing-up on your list. People want to know the value you are offering them.
Thinking that a collection of emails means that someone on that list will eventually buy from you, only because it’s a numbers game, simply isn’t logical thinking. People may give you their email address because it sounds like a good idea at the time.
This happens often in dating.
Why do women sometimes give a man her phone number and not go out with him? Or men collect women’s numbers? Most people who do this aren’t trying to be malicious. They share contact information because it seems like a nice idea at the time. But the reason why there is no follow-up call is that there really was no deep connection, no relationship spark in the brief interaction. There is no need for additional action. There is no connection beyond the immediate phone number exchanges. There is no deeper desire to see the other person again.
This happens with the lightbox gimmick as well. People submit their email addresses because it’s a good idea at the time. The site visitor just read a great article. Or he or she thinks your site is cool. If you consider how a buyers’ journey works here, this email request is a very early conversion. Very. In a way, the email exchange here is a complement. But a complement is NOT a sale.
I was just reading Ask by Ryan Levesque. If you are looking for greater engagement with your customer, read it. Read it now. He gets it, and it’s all in the Ask Method. Ryan sees how you have to build a relationship with someone before you ask for any personal information.
Let’s say you use the gimmick with the lightbox and don’t believe what I’m saying. Here’s a scenario of how this may work: the first email comes to your users who signed up at your site because they read a great article and you forced them to signup. Either they will be happy to hear from you or wonder what they signed up for. Some will click; most probably won’t. Then the next email comes, and then the next. But pay attention to the results – how many people who signed up from this lightbox form read the newsletter you send? Regularly, like every month? What is the gimmick really giving you?
I bet not what you originally wanted or planned. I bet you have a massive list with few clicks.
How do you know if you are using a gimmick or leveraging an action that complements your brand?
There are some questions you can ask yourself about the activity and action you are including at your site or part of your sales process to determine if you are flexing your brand or using a gimmick. Here’s some to consider:
What are the results you are really looking to get? Is this action leading you towards those results or are they supporting a numbers game to make sales?
What does your offline sales funnel really look like? How do you get business today? How do you think you could reflect those steps online?
Does this action represent a transaction or a step towards building a relationship?
Does the action reflect your brand’s values? Or does it distract from your brand? (Remember: gimmicks tend to be annoying, disruptive, transactional in nature, and usually don’t build a relationship.)
If you are honest with yourself, you probably get new business today through word-of-mouth, referrals, or other relationships. These are all relationship-oriented business leads. If your business comes from word-of-mouth, from people having a great experience with your company or you personally, why do you think someone completing an online form for free information will buy from you? That relationship just isn’t there for that to happen. All you know is that reader liked the free information that he or she read. That doesn’t mean that person finds your company or your insights valuable; they found the article valuable. It’s a start, yes. But it’s not a conversion.
How can you get business by not using a gimmick?
1. Learn about your customers and find out what they like and don’t like. We all know that actions speak louder than words. If your customers don’t like what you are selling, they don’t buy it. Or they won’t read it. Or they won’t open the email. How do you learn about your customers?
Surveys
Analytic reports from social media, Web sites, and other activities
Call center activity and reports. Review the topics people call about and what they want to know.
If your mailing list is achieving no results – no clicks, no purchases, no actions – go talk to people on your list. Find out what they like or don’t like about your business. If they don’t talk to you, you have a fairly serious problem. Either you are targeting people who shouldn’t be on your mailing list or selling them something they don’t want.
My recommendation – get them off your list, refocus, retarget, and get people included who want to be there.
2. Talk to your customers in a way they can understand you. Using your metrics and analytics, learn about what your target audience wants, then talk to them in that way. You get the audience you talk to. If you don’t have the audience you want, it’s because you aren’t targeting the right people. Or you are talking to the right people in the wrong way. But how do you change it?
Determine what you are doing now that is working (getting you the results you want) and what’s not working (getting you results you don’t want).
Ask people to go to your site and review your materials and tell you what they think your value proposition is. If they don’t get what you do, no one else does either. If they get what you do and you don’t have an audience that is doing anything, you need to be honest with yourself – do these people want what you have? Are you solving a problem that this audience either doesn’t have or want to solve?
Make changes to your messaging and make your UX clearly actionable and easy to understand. Iterate on that until you start seeing results. Sometimes, it takes a while to get where you need to go, especially if you are doing something revolutionary.
Many people will look at a free content site as a way to press their noses against the glass and smell the rolls. But you want roll buyers, not roll sniffers.
3. Solve a problem and provide value. Sometimes, I think as entrepreneurs we risk falling in love with our product so much that we forget to ask ourselves “why would someone want to buy this?” And if we do ask that, we don’t follow it up with the next question, “who would want to buy this?” Products we create are like our children. And everyone loves their child, flaws and all. But the difference between a baby and a product is that you need to be honest about your product and why someone would want it or not. (No one ever sees a baby as being ugly.)
People will pay for something they find valuable (see earlier points in the article). Some questions to consider that will help you see that:
Why should someone come back to your site? Is this an ongoing problem that they will have until they get a solution? Or is this temporary that they can fix?
Is your product helping your users and target audience? Or is it something you want to sell? (I’d recommend stop thinking about yourself and sales and start thinking about how you are helping someone and why they will find your help valuable. That’s what gives you success. People understand and acknowledge the value of help. But if your product isn’t helpful and about you and your success, well…)
Why are people NOT clicking to buy? Sure, you have customers, but the real opportunity lies in those who are not buying from you.
Why are they not clicking?
How can you engage with them to change their minds?
How can you build a relationship with them to change that?
4. Engage with your audience. Ryan does this with his Ask Method – he does surveys. You can also do this through social media or other communication. Engagement builds a relationship with your customers. You have to find a way to communicate with them, get information from them, build a relationship with you. Both sides need to learn about the other and invest in the relationship if there is to be a sale at some point.
Relationships are dialogs. Your customer is learning just as much about you as you are about them. This is why having smaller stores was important in the past. The smaller store owners would get to know you and sell products made by someone else that solved your problem. They got to know your joys and fears, what makes you tick. With the rise of the Internet and direct sales models, site owners are expected to know all of your customers – B2B or B2C. That’s a lot of people. This is why you can’t run a store anymore without tools. You need to get to know your customers and prospects and they need to get to know you to make a decision.
If you look at Gypsy Rose Lee, she didn’t know each member of her audience personally, but she understood what they were looking for based on their reaction to her shows. They kept coming so she gave them what they wanted. That’s the sign of a great entertainer – they know what their audience likes to see.
If you aren’t sure how to get started talking to your customers, use Ryan’s Ask Method. Ask them questions through surveys. Alternatively, start a conversation with your customers on social media. Or offer them something for free and observe the response. Find out what they like, give them more of, maybe charge for it if they demand even more.
Sure, you’ve gotta find a way to connect with your audience. But do you need a gimmick or a brand? Gypsy Rose Lee got it right – she got a brand and left them wanting more. So should you.
This is artwork from The Dallas Entrepreneur Center, on the second floor in one of the conference rooms. It’s one of my favorite pieces that they have from this artist.
Businesses are based on conversations between people. And we all know that conversations build relationships. The rise of companies like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, eBay and other P2P companies have demonstrated that people prefer to connect with each other rather than a company. They choose the “sharing economy” or the “respect economy” over the traditional buy-from-a-corporation economy. We also notice this with Small Business Saturdays. Many would prefer to help keep a store open that is owned by someone they know, or someone they can meet, rather than a store owned by a corporation. Sure, people connect with AirBnB and other P2P marketplaces because they are the middle men that connect the two together. Same with Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces. But don’t forget – the end connection is the individual. That is what people are truly looking to find.
We know the fate of middlemen over the long term. History has demonstrated that middle men usually fade away or adopt a new role. What’s most curious about the peer-to-peer is that pre-Internet, pre-malls and pre-mega-stores, we did business with smaller companies and individuals. Business was between people, just locally. It’s almost like Small Business Saturdays take us back in time to an era where we knew the store owner’s name.
When it comes to business, it’s the relationships between the two people who are completing a deal that matters most. Sure, the companies matter and the paperwork is between the companies, but it is people completing the deal. And it’s the interactions around the deal between the two people – from meeting to forming a relationship to sealing the deal – that’s the key to a great experience.
Sadly, we focus too much on constructing the perfect process to get a lead or that reflects how most users decide to buy. We’ll spend hours considering all of the thoughts and actions involved in making a purchase decision that we forget that the relationship itself is the most important aspect to any business transaction. A great CTA button doesn’t make someone buy anything. A great white paper could influence a sales decision, but it alone won’t drive a sales signature. Neither does the perfect graphic on a page or the perfect message. The forms, the emails, the social media posts. In the big picture, it’s important, but it’s not going to make or break a deal.
A sales/buying decision happens if the person prioritizes that decision to buy high on his list (because it impacts something else in his or her life) and if the person has a good relationship with your company (or the sales person). Materials like white papers and blog posts contribute to a great relationship, but they are a small part of it. If anything, they spark a connection around shared knowledge, rather than solving a problem.
Did content marketing solve the wrong problem regarding people contacting sales less and searching on the Web more?
I think so. We made searching on the Internet to solve your problem easier than having a pleasant experiencing talking to a sales person, which was the TRUE problem. People were doing ok researching on the Internet. A new problem was created with the rise of content marketing – people were solving for potentially the wrong problems and self-diagnosing the wrong solutions. It became similar to people self-diagnosing medical issues, legal issues, and other problems that require a professional to resolve. And identify the correct problem (90% of getting to the right solution is identifying the right problem.) The problem was never people researching on the Internet. The problem was sales people being under too much pressure to sell and make revenue rather than build a relationship.
Even if you read those 11 content pieces that research tells us are how many content pieces someone reads before contacting sales, at some point if you wanted to buy, you need to talk to sales, visit a site to purchase or contact the company to buy. Sales builds relationships between customers and companies to become a commitment. Again, content marketing builds a different type of relationship. It’s a knowledge relationship. It’s a great “dating” relationship. But it’s not a personal relationship that leads to commitment and a sale. (And to follow this analogy, yes, customer support and service is like the marriage counselor.)
Sure, we may buy from Amazon that doesn’t require personal interactions. But a small secret to these B2C sales sites – they often don’t consider the first purchase a true conversion. To them, that’s like a date. Someone has to purchase from them 2-3 times in a certain timeframe to consider that person a true customer. It’s in those 2-3 sales that someone builds a type of bond with that company in lieu of a real live conversation. The company proves that they are helping that customer and is necessary in their life. They build a type of attachment.
It’s that personal relationship that is key to future business. In the future, it is the personal relationship that will connect us all globally.
Thomas Friedman, Globalization 3.0, and the relationship between individuals
As Thomas Friedman says, we are in Globalization 3.0. I would debate the version number of globalization with him. I think we’ve been global far longer than he claims (there was trade early on in civilizations to the Romans and Greeks and possibly Egyptians, but that’s beside the point). But I agree with the point he makes that with the rise of the Internet, we are all going to be in a common marketplace competing with each other for work. Fiverr, 99Designs, AirBnB (competing against Hyatt and Hilton, believe it or not), Upwork – these are all sites where companies and people can access talent through a click. More of these types of sites will rise, along with individual sites, allowing individuals to build direct relationships with contacts in other countries.
Skype, WhatsApp, and social media has allowed us to connect with people around the world. With a tap we can be on a phone call with someone across the globe as if they are in our living room. And we even have the technology to see them as if they were sitting across from us, having a coffee.
Virtual teams are more common because of this phenomenon. The new way of doing virtual work today is to acknowledge that yes, we are working from home. Yes, packages do come to the door. Yes, our family is at home. And yes, it can be like our family coming to our office – we don’t hide these people. We are now transparent about having a life outside of work. It’s no longer a secret.
All of these situations are providing us with the training and skills we will need to understand that relationships are the key to business. Sales happens through relationships. And relationships happen through conversations with people – conversations over the phone, through Web cam, connecting over 140 characters, 100 words, short posts and videos. As he states in the video below, people will connect to find someone to create objects with a cheaper price or better quality. We’ll be building brands and a business to help us connect to others.
The days of thinking that we don’t need to have relationships with others to be successful has ended. Social media has killed that. We are all a personal brand, especially for work and on personal social media. We build relationships with others. We do business for our companies, not thru our companies, but through our personal connections. We connect with others and include them to collaborate, to create, to make something bigger and better. We’re like the pottery guy in Peru. Sure, we can make pottery ourselves, but if someone in China can partner and do it faster, cheaper, better – that’s the future. Soon, we will all be working with people who complement our own skillsets to achieve a goal. And we need to build relationships to do that. That’s why they are more important now than ever.
People come into your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime. This is true not only for people in your life, but for prospects and customers for your company.
And your company will probably touch people’s lives in the same way – for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
This means that not all customer relationships will turn into a lead, a sale, a testimonial, a support customer. Sometimes, a prospect could turn into an influencer. Or a prospect could stay a prospect, as someone who likes your product and recommends it to colleagues so they can champion the sale. Or a prospect is part of a product evaluation team and will never use your product. Or a prospect could buy your product, become a customer, love using your product and become your best support agent on a forum or write your most used testimonial.
Not all prospects and customers are equal and they shouldn’t be treated equally. Sure, treat all prospects and customers with friendliness and warmth, but you don’t need to immediately funnel someone into a lead path or expect them to buy. Again, some prospects will be a connection for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
I think companies need to accept that it’s natural for prospects to to do this. This is what it means to have a target market. Not everyone will have problems that your company can solve, or the solution isn’t exactly what they had in mind to help them for whatever reason. And that is ok.
What’s more important tha this is the relationship the company has with this individual.
We focus our businesses so much on doing, on activities to work towards a goal, and that goal is usually purchasing. We create or document buyer or customer journeys that outline actions and decisions. But is that the only goal in business?
There is a great piece of art at the Dallas Entrepreneur Center about business being about socializing, or conversations.
Deals are made by exchanging ideas and bringing a prospect or customer along with you in your communication.
Clicking on links or reading pieces of content doesn’t drive a deal. Sure, customers are now doing more research online than ever before, reading up to 11 pieces of content before talking to a salesperson. In response, marketing departments created content marketing. Was that the right solution for the wrong problem?
To me, the problem that has always existed in the background is that sales people were and still can be too overwhelming, overly driven to make someone purchase. People don’t like pressure, so in turn, they answered their questions on their own. They decided to build a relationship only when they were ready.
And who would blame them? The sales experience could be related to the dating world where you go to a bar to not find a date, but to go steady after a conversation and a drink. Not just who wants that? Who NEEDS that? It’s insane.
Sadly, in marketing, the focus continues on turning someone into a lead. Shouldn’t marketing and sales think bigger? I remember as a kid hearing how sales people would see everyone as helping them in their business. This means that not everyone is a lead. Someone may lead you to a lead, knowing someone who may need your product. Or someone may have a service that helps your company. Or in 6 months, that person could suggest your company and product to someone.
What we sometimes miss when we are so focused on turning leads is introductions and opportunities to build relationships with those who can help you by helping them. By focusing on the lead process and selling a product or creating product only, you are missing out on the potential of a new business relationship. This person is a prospect – not just a prospect for a sale, a way to get a lead, or another role – this person offer a prospective business relationship. Explore where it could go and don’t limit your view to sales. There’s more to business than your bottom line.
I propose taking a step back and working on the higher level goal – developing a relationship with your prospect. Through the customer relationship lifecycle, rather than a defined journey path, which is important, figure out what the relationship should look like at different parts of the cycle. Determine what it will take to go to the next step of the process. Consider what’s needed to make a decision. And if someone doesn’t go to the next step, that’s ok. They don’t have to; the relationship is more important.
Customer Relationship Lifecycle
By going away from the focus being on leads, focus instead on how you can help this person, get to know that person and let him know what you do, get to know the problems you solve. Shift the interaction from lead generation to making business being socializing with purpose. Be helpful to others. Create a relationship.
Build a relationship with that person who may be in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Who knows what it will bring – and that’s the joy of building relationships with customers.
We often hear about contempt in the news – airline employees, politicians, customer service representatives (Comcast, usually). But how do you know when an employee of a company feels contempt for you? What does it look like?
Interacting with someone who feels contempt (a version of pity) for you is different than someone who feels anger, frustration or who lacks self-awareness (e.g., being too focused on their own lives to notice that they hurt your feelings, forgetting that you are a person too, or forgetting that you have knowledge as well).
Here’s how it’s different.
Before you realize it, someone who feels contempt towards you has already objectified you. You are not a person in the eyes of someone who feels contempt. It’s easier for someone to stay distant if you are a member of a defined group with specific traits and characteristics versus being a human with thoughts, feelings and a background story. If you have thoughts and feelings, there may be a story as to how you got into your situation – and there may be a solution (based in compassion). Keeping you distant and labelled not only makes it easier to objectify you, but it can help the individual maintain his or her belief system. You are fitting into their story of the world. They are not hearing your story to understand you and see if they can connection to your story. This is the danger of stereotypes and prejudices – someone is basing their understanding of a person on perceivable traits from a group and not on their personhood.
But notice that there is a way to "fix" contempt and that's by breaking through stereotypes and getting to know and understand the person. More on this coming.
Keep in mind that contempt isn’t about love and understanding; it’s about power and control. Rather than the intention of the interaction focusing on how to help the other person, it turns to be “what did you do to cause your situation?” This is the complete opposite of compassion and helping someone solve their problem.
What are some signs that someone may feel contempt towards you as a customer?
The customer is never right. A customer may be participating in a discussion that isn’t just a debate or a time to share ideas, and learn new things with an employee. That employee is doing what he or she can to be right.
This is a different type of discussion than someone talking about facts or arguing a point about how to address an issue or trying to get to the best possible answer. I’m talking about being right even if the person is misguided and plain wrong. The employee keeps the conversation going, rambling across topics to get you to admit that he or she is right about a topic, even going as far as to fall to opinion only and ignore facts.
Mansplaining is a great example. In those cases, men feel the need to explain something to a woman to be right. And they aren’t proving something to you, but to themselves. They want to be right and make you wrong because, well, to them you are a mere woman.
A version of mansplaining can happen to customers by company employees. The customer may make a claim about an event, or product or issue. The employee claims that the customer must be wrong, the company is never wrong. There is no acknowledgement of the customer's point or a path defined so everyone wins. It's only about the employee winning and being right.
A friend of mine shared a story of her experience in Home Depot. She was looking for a specific part. She asked the salesperson where that part was in the store. He showed her where it was but proceeded to tell her that she needed a different part. He never asked her why she needed the part or what she was doing for a project. There was a lot of back and forth between my friend and this employee, a seemingly circular conversation where he kept trying to "be right." Finally, the employee admitted that she had the right part, but then questioned why she had that situation in the first place with this employee.
That employee's actions are a sign of contempt.
Demonstrating an underlying hostility towards a customer; "Why can't they do what they are supposed to do?" It’s understandable that someone would be annoyed at answering the same question four times in a row. But there can be a response based on being tired of answering the same question, stressed about the line of 30 people all wanting to get a fast answer "right now," and annoyed that these customers keep asking questions, thinking "sigh can’t they just figure this out on their own? "
A great example of an employee feeling contempt is the American Airlines guy who loses it. I mean, we’re not just talking anger. He obviously can’t understand why the customers are upset, and we can only assume that he believes they caused their own problems, he constantly defends his behavior (because he is right – and will be right, darn it!), and wants the customers to just do what they are supposed to do (in this case, give him the stroller and quietly sit in their seats and not speak up).
It's dangerous for an employee to think that a customer should be able to solve a problem on his own and that they caused their own problem. The next series of thoughts after those can include "why" that customer can't solve their own problem, which can introduce negative, prejudicial sentiments like: because they just aren’t smart enough, can’t speak English well enough, are female or some other factor. The person is again, objectified, and reduced to a handful of traits. If the employee got to know him or her and the situation, most likely the response would be different. But that's not happening.
Ignoring a customer. Somehow employees think ignoring customers is ok, but it isn’t. If you have been ignored by a team or an individual, you know what I’m talking about. You feel invisible and not heard. In a way, ignoring or excluding a customer is a form of passive-aggressive behavior. You are placing that person outside the group because they are somehow different from you, saying something you don't agree with, or aggravate you. Now, you may be ignoring someone because they are mean spirited. That's a different story.
Sometimes an employee will ignore a customer, hoping he or she will go away and solve the problem on their own. They caused it, they should solve it. That's not helpful and will only present a company in a negative light. The customer will believe the company doesn't care, which most likely, isn't true. The managers in that company would care if they heard that complaint. Only that employee doesn't care. But the employee may not realize the impact he is having on that customer – and the company's image – that's the problem!
Calling a customer a name. Yes, sometimes people can be 12. This is never acceptable, but it seems to happen when contempt is present. We see this frequently in politics today with people calling others “libtards” and “snowflakes.” Name calling is a type of objectification. That person isn’t an individual with a rationale and reasoning as to why he believes as he does. And we have already covered where that goes.
Subtle negative comments. Has someone ever said something to you or near you that made you do a double take, but no one seemed to notice or care? No, it wasn’t a mistake and no, you didn’t hear them wrong. They said it. Most likely, if what the person said distressed you, it wasn’t a mistake, or at least a conscious mistake.
If the person who made such a comment was an employee saying this to a customer, depending on what was said, there could be a lawsuit. It sounds extreme, but there are many videos today of employees speaking inappropriately to customers. If you are in that situation as an employee, before you speak, pause, and ask yourself why you are saying what you are saying. There may be a personal issue driving that comment – from being jealous that the person is model-thin to her resembling your mother-in-law who you hate.
Contempt is never acceptable, especially at work or between employees and customers. However, if you feel contempt towards someone and notice that you are exhibiting some of the traits above, pause before you act and think through what you are saying (or doing) and why. You may be overwhelmed and need a break. The customer may remind you of someone you don't like. There could be many triggers for your contempt.
However, the best way to break the tension and remove the contempt is to ask that person to share their story.
How is their day?
Why did they buy the product?
What is their weekend like?
What are your plans today?
Getting personal always erases contempt, especially because it is during those moments when we realize that we are all humans with thoughts, emotions and stories trying to do our best. And we start to find common ground. Connect with each other. Find common life experience. Start to feel empathy.
We are taught in school that we should treat others as we wish to be treated. In the new economy, we need to treat others as they want to be treated.*
But how do we know how others want to be treated?
We don’t. We can only speculate and imagine how someone else must feel in certain situations. And this is dangerous. Psychiatrists don’t like to treat people they haven’t at least met (the ‘Goldwater Rule’). For those of us who haven’t studied the mind for at least 8 years in a university and had clinical training, playing armchair psychiatrist can be beyond harmful in how we deal with other people. Not only do we have a light understanding of various disorders based on a handful of Internet searches, but we make judgements based on a surface understanding of someone based on our experience of them. We only know what we have experienced or encountered, which is quite limited to a few hours versus the years that person has lived and had experience to shape their current personality. Personality tests can have a similar effect. We know how we personally scored, but can you use generalities to make assumptions about other people? Not always. What you see on the surface may not fully reflect someone’s true identity or background. People are complicated and diverse.
We all live very individual lives from when we wake up to when we go to sleep. We have different emotional responses, different thoughts, different beliefs, different experiences. We connect with each other through language and shared experiences, both physical and emotional.
We need to use shared experiences as a frame of reference to understand each other. That’s how we bond. When we date, we share experiences to get to know the other person and how they react in different situations. When we have friends, we share past experiences and do things together to understand the other person.
Why don’t we do that with our customers and prospects?
Lately in business, we haven’t been. That’s why we hear stories like the ones from United, JetBlue, Comcast. What we see from those employees is contempt for customers. There was a video about an incident on American Airlines where the employee acted like he was going to get into a physical altercation with a passenger. He was that angry. I take that back – not angry – full of contempt for the passengers on the plane. How do you get that hostile trying to tell someone she needs to check her baby carriage into luggage? One perspective is that you come to work full of contempt for these customers. Or you feel it build during your day saying the same thing to everyone ALL. DAY. LONG.
Arthur Brooks talks about contempt fueling the polarization we are seeing in politics today:
I don’t want to get into a political discussion, but what he presents is a great frame to discuss why empathy matters and is relevant in our interactions today. There is a lot of contempt in society today – polarized views, and not just in the political sphere. The challenge with the United story was that the airline felt it was 100% correct in its actions and claimed no responsibility. Similar with JetBlue – there is no responsibility from their side. It’s an “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality that doesn’t encourage relationship building.
The discussion shouldn’t be about who is right or wrong. Everyone should be winning. How do you get there? Not through contempt, that’s for sure.
Contempt is the opposite of empathy. When you are feeling contempt, you are feeling a type of disgust that originates from pity. Pity originates from believing that someone can’t help themselves out of a horrible situation. In a way, you see that person as a lesser person. “Why can’t that person figure out a solution to his or her problem?” You have no patience for hearing that person’s choices and decisions because to you it could all be avoided if that person were smarter, more creative, more innovative, or whatnot.
Contempt builds distance between people. It doesn’t build relationships. And in today’s world, relationships are vital to business. In the future, it will be even more important.
The Peer-to-Peer Economy
There was a great video by Noam Chomsky about Bernie Sanders and the rise of the peer-to-peer economy – even in politics.
Bernie showed us the power of the people when we make a conscious decision to act. Individuals funded his campaign and enabled it to get as far as it did. He made funding his campaign approachable at $27/person. That’s about the price of a moderate dinner out.
If we take this model one step further, we are seeing the rise of Airbnb, Uber and Lyft, Etsy, eBay, Amazon and other peer-to-peer companies. Business is fast becoming shifting between B2B or B2C and less peer-to-peer and more person-to-person. Marketplace companies are emerging to facilitate these transactions. This isn’t a new idea, really. Marketplaces have existed since the start of the Web; users then weren’t ready to embrace this type of interaction or economy.
What’s different about P2P (person-to-person) interaction is that this is based strongly on relationships – relationships between people and relationships to the holding company/marketplace. Without them, they won’t work.
This makes empathy for customers and the relationship lifecycle even more important. As we move to a P2P environment where we are interacting with individuals more often, we all need to be more understanding of each other. The world is shrinking – you can reach out to someone in India with a single click and start working with him or her. But the ability to understand another is becoming a skill. As the world becomes smaller, what people want and need is getting more similar and more different by the day (globalization and localization combined with personal preference – a tall order!). Experiences are more diverse. It’s difficult to truly understand another person’s experience and find commonalities (empathy), but without this, connection is challenging.
What to do?
It seems we have some time! We still are in the B2B/B2C paradigm.
Today customers have an initial relationship with a company through content, building trust. It can take up to 11 or more pieces of content before a prospect reaches out to talk to someone at a company. Sometimes, a prospect doesn’t talk to anyone before they buy.
But at some point, prospects and customers need to talk to an employee of the company. And that conversation introduces a type of relationship between the prospect/customer and employee. It may be a 5 or 10 minute conversation and quick acquaintance, but it’s a type of interaction and relationship nevertheless. During the conversation there needs to be some type of understanding built to help the prospect/customer resolve his issue.
Today we are connecting prospects/customers with employees through business conversations. Business is a conversation. And in a conversation, if you can’t connect to someone through a shared experience and feel empathy, you can’t build a relationship. And soon, we will be moving from the B2B/B2C model to the P2P model to a pure relationship model. Heck, we may be there already today.
Of course I have to comment on the AWS outage! I think Hybrid IT is the way to go – you need both on-prem and off-prem to support your apps and data and have load balancing and other jazz in case something like this happens. Data protection, backup, backup for apps even multiple data centers – you've gotta do it!
So in the spirit of fun, here's all I have to say to those on AWS only:
Recently, I hired a style consultant because I needed a personal branding refresh. I felt that nothing in my closet suited me. Each morning was a struggle to put an outfit together.
The process I experienced to co-create this new style with her with wasn't just about buying new clothes, her telling me what was in or out of style this month, and what would look good on me. She had to get to know me as a person.
The style of the home where I lived
What I did for work
What I did for fun
How I socialized with friends
My life perspective
My goals and dreams
When I saw where the process was going, I realized that what was in my closet didn't match my thoughts, my actions, my speech – nothing. My look was distinctly separate from me, the person today. There wasn't much in common between the two except that I owned the clothes.
Anyone experiencing me was having a disjointed experience, and that wasn't doing me any favors. The look made one statement; my personality and actions made a different one.
I was like a company that had a logo and colors that didn't match the experience the customers were having.
For example, one UI may look super slick and modern, but the company's processes are antiquated with fax machines and paperwork. Another UI may look traditional, but the company has new mobile approaches that are unexpected. You have to wonder if the approaches unexpected because they are so new, or are they unexpected because after one look at the company's brand, it seemed so conservative that you were going to need to fax that in?
(I'm guessing option 2. I'm always amazing how Chase bank has new banking features mainly because they are a bank with old-fashioned baggage. But I'm never amazed that Capital One is doing something new – it seems perfect for them because they are so new and shiny.)
Sometimes I think we focus too much on the look of an app. It's like we focus on choosing a great outfit, but we don't focus on it being suitable and feeling right.
Sometimes before you can wear a particular style outfit, you need to do some personal work. You need to shift your beliefs or you need to work on your self-esteem and confidence (e.g., to really pull off a power suit, you need to have the confidence to go with it).
Anyone can put on a Versace shirt, but is Versace (or Armani, or any designer piece) right for you?
An app may feel simple with a lot of white space and light colors, but that doesn't mean that the users understand what to do at the site once they are there. It may be the best UI design approach, but functionally, it's not easy to understand to get started. And that's a shame.
Then people wonder why no one uses the app even though it looks great. We need to understand that great experiences go deeper than the screen. They go into the processes of the company – what it does, how it works, how employees communicate.
Sometimes company branding can sometimes be based on external forces:
What are the competitors doing?
How do others brand themselves?
What's the hot color today?
But branding should really be about the employees and how they see the company and the product.
How does the company describe itself? How do the employees describe it?
What words does it use to describe what it sells?
How do the employees engage with each other?
How does finance communicate with customers (especially those who don't pay ontime)?
How does customer support and service treat customers? Do they do the minimal work required or do they go the extra mile?
And like how you need to sometimes be in a crisis to know who your friends are and what they are REALLY like - you don't experience what a company is until you NEED to interact with customer service because something went wrong.
They have a nice site and offer pieces from boutiques around the world. But their real value – and their brand – really comes from their service.
I was originally going to pick up this shirt at a local boutique, but I couldn't find it. I then asked to get the shirt shipped to me and I was hoping to get it before I left on a business/pleasure trip. Unfortunately, I didn't. While I was on the trip, Shoptiques called me to see if I got the shirt. I couldn't believe how much they cared and remembered to find out if I got what I wanted.
That is what makes them unique and makes me rave about them to everyone. They have the most personal customer service ANYWHERE.
I'd like to work on more projects where we talk about how we want someone to feel or think about after they visit an app or a site. I understand that a product needs to ship and is often "born" allowing a user to accomplish some basic functions and goals. I even encourage my clients to do that because everyone needs to start somewhere – and starting at parity isn't a bad place to start.
But over time, you have to allow your app to develop character.
There has to be something you offer that others don't that makes you unique and unforgettable – like people do with their personalities.
And a cool navigation device or a fun image isn't what will make your app memorable. Interesting, yes. Fun, yes. Memorable and recommendable – I'm not too sure about that.
We need to talk about what the user REALLY wants to do and how the app can make that happen – not what the product manager wants to achieve, not what's cool, not what in style today.
What do we want customers to say after they are done using the app or site?
What will encourage someone to want to use it again? What does the user find to be useful?
How did that person feel when they used it? Did they feel like they got something done?
Does the user feel like you care about them and what they are doing?
Or the simple, million-dollar question: If the company/produce was your best friend, how would you describe it based on its actions/functionality alone?
We almost need to rethink branding to focus a little less on its style and a little more on reflecting the personality of the company itself (and typically, that personality is reflected in every touch point with a customer). We need to take a page out of my style consultant's book and get to know the employees and how they work to create a brand – a corporate personality – that truly reflects the uniqueness of that company.
The phone line
The forums
The brochures and collateral
The billing structure
The support team.
How it communicates and what it says
What it gives away for free
What it charges for
The look and feel needs to match that. Otherwise, your company will wake up one day and not like what it's wearing and not understand why, until a branding consultant comes in to get to know the company and find the right way to express itself.
I started writing about this a long time ago – I didn't know that I was writing about customer experience. It didn't really exist then, but here's the start. Enjoy!
Rather than renting a car or booking a hotel room this trip, I decided to rent a car thru FlightCar and a room through AirBnB. I figured it would be a different, yet fun, way to experience my business trip.
I'll be writing more about this later this week, but I think what I like most about the shared economy is that it really is all about trust. Right now, a woman in the Bay area is trusting that I won't crash her car. And the woman that I'm staying with thru AirBnB is trusting that I won't be a jerk and trash her place.
I'm looking forward to how this will make be a better traveler. Traveling anonymously using coprorate property (chain hotels and rental cars) gives you some really bad life habits and gets you to not care about where you are staying or what you are using. Someone will clean your mess. Someone will straighten out your belongings. If you break it, the corporation will fix it and pay for it.
This time while traveling I'm interacting with real people. I am staying in the same space with someone. I am driving a car that a real person owns and uses on a daily basis.
I feel differently about using their things. I feel trusted that I won't be a jerk about it – and I'm respond in kind, taking extra special care of their things.
I can't wait to see how this experience goes over the next few days!
