Customer Experience University - Winning Loyalty & Engagement One Customer at a Time

It’s Emotional – Now is the Time to Design

Let’s face it, COVID-19 forced most business leaders and entrepreneurs to alter their operations, service delivery, and customer experience overnight.
If, before COVID -19, you sold flowers in a traditional retail store, suddenly; you had to find a way to take your entire business online. Service providers leveraged technologies to maintain relationships with their clients and minimize revenue losses.
COVID-19 was a gut punch that forced radical business transitions, reduced service interactions to digital exchanges, and produced functional yet largely undifferentiated service experiences.
During those urgent transitions, most leaders functioned on adrenaline and survival instincts.

It’s Emotional – Flip the Feeling

I have an unusual perspective when it comes to the emotional impact of this pandemic. My view is shaped by working as a licensed clinical psychologist early in my career and helping people deal with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and isolation. It’s also affected by the last 20-plus years of my career, where I’ve helped mostly Fortune 500 leaders create positive emotional bonds with their customers.
I share that context because I am about to say something outrageous and I hope you will stay with me.
Ok, here goes…  
I am convinced that the loneliness, anxiety, sadness, and loss of control emerging from the pandemic can be POSITIVE, but only if (and it’s a big IF) we learn lessons by flipping our feelings.

It’s Emotional – Listen to the Feelings Behind the Words

Thank you for joining me on this third installment in my series “It’s Emotional – Creating an Unprecedented Team and Customer Experience in the Pandemic.” This series is designed to offer tools to manage your emotions as well as support the emotional journey of your prospects and customers.
A couple of installments back I talked about my dislike for how the word unprecedented is being used in the context of this pandemic. Typically, these days unprecedented implies no one has ever encountered a pandemic before and that history offers no guidance on how to cope and prevail. This week I am bristling at the way the word empathy is being used in the context of the pandemic. Quite frankly I love the word empathy and I’ve used the word regularly since I finished my doctorate in clinical psychology back in the late 1980s.
What’s bothersome about the word’s use these days, is that it’s thrown around as if everyone knows how to be empathic and as if it’s easy to demonstrate this component of emotional intelligence (EQ).

It’s Emotional – Honor the Fear

This is the second installment in my series “It’s Emotional–Creating an Unprecedented Team and Customer Experience in This Pandemic.” This series is designed to offer tools to manage your emotions as well as support the emotional journey of your prospects and customers.
There are days in this pandemic reality that quite literally seem upside down. While disorienting at times, I am heartened by how core leadership and human experience skills resoundingly apply; particularly when those skills are tempered by some new emotional guidelines.

It’s Emotional – Focus on the Hole

This is the first installment in my series It’s Emotional–Creating an Unprecedented Team and Customer Experience in this Pandemic. This series is designed to offer tools to manage your emotions as well as support the emotional journey of your prospects and customers.
This week’s installment is titled Focus on the Hole. I take exception with the overuse of some words these days, particularly when those words suggest we are powerless or helpless.
One of my least favorite words (which I intentionally repurposed) for the title of this series is the word UNPRECEDENTED. Normally when we hear that word these days, it is used to signify the magnitude of the challenges we are all facing. With regard to challenges, let’s look at what the word implies.

Break the Glass – The ABCs of Customer Experience During COVID-19

This is the 5th and final installment in my series Break the Glass, where we are looking at what you can do to deliver a positive human experience in this time of great business disruption. (Next week will start a new series on the role emotions play in customer experience delivery.)
Sales trainers have long championed the concept of ABC. Which stands for always be closing. They suggest that when presenting your service or product, you should always be moving the conversation to close the sale. In the context of our current pandemic, I would modify ABC so that it stands for always be connecting.

Break the Glass – Be Surprisingly Kind

This is the 4th installment in my series Break the Glass, where we are looking at what you can do to maintain a positive human experience in a time of great business disruption.
Our focus today is on being surprisingly kind.
Prior to COVID-19’s disruption across much of the world, my team and I launched something we call the Surprisingly Kind movement. We are collecting and sharing stories of surprising kindness.
 

Break the Glass – Set Expectations

Thanks for joining me for the third installment in my series titled Break the Glass, where we’re looking at ways to take constructive action in these unprecedented times.
This week we’ll explore the importance of setting expectations for team members and customers alike. We’ll also link expectation setting to the third of the four key behaviors covered in this series – namely letting people know if and when you are open.
No matter what the status of your business – now is not the time to go radio silent.

Break the Glass – Anticipate

Last week we talked about the first of four categories of constructive behaviors that this series will cover, namely listening to the needs and pain of your team and customers. This week we will focus on anticipation and I will link anticipation to the second category of constructive behavior, which is offering value, thought leadership, and kindness.

Break the Glass – Listen

I have been surprised at how quickly some owners, leaders, and managers have lost their focus on the people who created their success. Those leaders certainly prioritized team members and customers when business was good, but due to panic prompted by threats of business survival. In essence, self-preservation leads to “self-absorption.”