What Did You Expect?

Here is an idea for a session in which you need your participants to focus on customer needs and expectations.

Analyse what the customer may already think about your business. Review their negative expectations.

Let me explain.

Sometimes when you think about the IRS or Revenue Canada you may have a particular expectation of what it would be like to deal with them. Your expectation may not be all positive. You might be surprised, though, how it would really turn out.

Another example: Let's say you had a negative experience when getting your hair cut. That might colour how you view all future haircuts.

So here is how we turn it into an activity.

Example: Your team works in customer service at a telephone company.
Put the participants into small groups. Have them come up with 6 lines that express some of the more negative expectations customers may have about them. You want the teams to record their ideas, then read them and act them out with all the expression they can muster.

"They never connect the phone when they say they will?"
"I never get to talk to a real person."
"I can't understand their bills at all."
"There's usually a long wait until you can get a phone."
"These guys are all the same, big or small they don't care about the customer."
"Their support people aren't available when I want them."

Now these may be true, they may be partially true or they may be the stuff that myths are made of. Whatever, this is an opportunity of examining where some of your customers are coming from. Can you turn some of them around? Where do you think you should make changes?

So just an idea I throw out to you to see if you can adapt to your own training. My thanks to Marnie Olson for this idea.