The Way You Make Me Feel

Introduction

Probably the most important management fundamental that is being ignored today is staying close to the customer to satisfy his needs and anticipate his wants. In too many companies, the customer has become a bloody nuisance whose unpredictable behaviour damages carefully made strategic plans, whose activities mess up computer operations, and who stubbornly insists that purchased products should work.

- Lew Young, Editor-in-Chief, Business Week

In the early part of spring I was invited to a session attractively titled “Sales is Service and Service is Sales” by one of our vendors. Catchy line. Unlike many other times when I was invited to some canned sales presentation disguised as an attempt to enlighten and educate, I opted to attend this one. I even passed the invitation to other managers and encouraged them to attend as well. I had limited expectations of the entire affair. When I arrived at the location, there were very few people there and my already low expectations seemed reasonable. I did not know of the presenter prior to the invitation and the Google search did not translate into excitement. In my mind, other invitees had the same view and therefore opted to use their time more productively, hence the low attendance. I learnt later that we were the only ones invited.

The next three hours were special. It inspired this work among other initiatives that I have triggered within teams that I managed. The presenter was an old school performance consultant who forced me, and the entire audience, to focus on some very basic components of customer service. Who would have thought that an event which was geared to sell me on the virtues of a new piece of software would have led to a whole new approach to delivering service to customers? Not that the issues raised were by any means revolutionary; they weren’t. What happened was the application of a new perspective to what I had spent the better part of fifteen years doing every day.