Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

I have written a lot lately concerning everything that we do in business - I don’t care what department it is in - has to be done with your customer in mind. 

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From the IT department that much of the time attempts to create “cool” over functionality for the customer, to those who don’t even have a USP to measure all the innovative ideas that may come down the pipe by. 

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But let’s delve a little deeper into this crucial area. The bottom line is that your customer or potential customer is a human being. Whether you know it or not, even if you’re selling pet food you’re selling to the owner of the pet, not to the pet in and of itself. 

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The point I want to bring out in this post is that empathy for our fellow human beings is really the great driver for innovation that occurs in our daily creativity. 

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Now you may not think of it in that way, but it’s true. Let’s take the example of handling returns in a retail setting.

You see the customer coming and just by the look on their face you know it’s going to be a difficult situation. But for a moment take the empathy approach and thought. How far away did they have to travel to get there? Did they have to interrupt something that they had planned to take care of the problem? With the gas prices did it even cost them a few more dollars by just having to be there today? 

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You see! You are looking at it from their point-of-view.

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Now how does that relate to what business is truly all about? Well first of all in the situation we are talking about, training your people to look at things from the customers experience helps them to have a good attitude during the ensuing transaction and communication over the issue at hand. This is always good customer relations. 

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But even more important than the temporary good will created by the employee in their reaction to the customer’s problem, now you have an employee that can be looking for ways to serve your customer even better. When you train, yes train them to empathize with other people as human beings, not only a customer, they are more apt to give feedback on how they can serve the customer better. And that’s a way to win the business of lifetime customers. That’s what business is all about.