Have you come across the Daniel Pink quote about sales? He says that “one in nine people work in sales. But so do the other eight,” pointing to the idea that we all work in influencing or persuading people to change their behaviour or trade something.
I want to make the same argument about customer service.
Because we all have people we work with… and we might find we can work with them more effectively if we think of them as prized customers.
If you ran a business and your top customer called you, how would you speak to them? How would you listen?
Imagine if we all treated each other with that level of care.
In Better Than Confidence, I share a key thinking tool of focusing on other people. We get so obsessed with ourselves, worrying what other people think about us, whether they like us, think we’re competent…. It’s incredibly unhelpful. What if instead we thought about the people we’re working with, our manager, our stakeholders, and considered who they are and what they need?
What if we asked, “how can I make their life easier today?”
Or, “what do I think is their top priority and how can I help them with that?”
And as a huge bonus to this shift in thinking, we’re likely to get the side-benefit of people liking us and thinking we’re competent.
Because we focused on them.
We added value.
Who are you working with today? What if you thought of them as your customer?
Let me know what you think and how you get on with using these tools, I love hearing from you.
All the best,
Helen.