A variation on last Monday’s theme of taking personal responsibility, was provided an email I received this morning from Jay Shaw, Supervisor of Order Management at Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee.
He writes: “I gave everyone on my team the book (The Napkin, The Melon & The Monkey)for a holiday gift, and I have been sharing Aha!s with the team and seeking out their own Aha! moments. Right now, I am stressing the need to advocate for our customers, and making sure my team has the tools and empowerment they need to advocate.  I have also been stressing to the team that they CAN make a difference in the customers’ experience.  We set the tone for each interaction. We can control the call. There are many things we can’t control, but if we focus on what we can and how those interactions affect the customer, we make a difference.”

Portia Nelson’s powerful poem speaks to this issue. As Jay pointed out, we have no control over theattitudes and behavior of our customers (our “holes in the sidewalk”). But we do have a choice of reactions. In any emotionally charged conversation there is point at which we decide (consciously or not) whether to allow ourselves to get hooked in by the customers’ emotions or stop for a millisecond to view the situation clearly, without emotion (“..walk down another street”). That decision point is where our personal power resides — if we choose to use it.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter 1.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost….I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But….it isn’t my fault.
Chapter 3.
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5.
I walk down another street.

This week create your own Aha! moment. Access your personal power and choose your reaction.

“I never considered it my responsibility to apologize to a customer for the inconvenience a problem had caused. But then I tried it. I was amazed at how those two words, ‘I apologize,’ immediately diffused customers’ anger.”

From the book, The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey

“Mam, to be honest, you’re lucky you got your order at all, considering we have been really short-staffed since we had the big lay off in back in September and lost about half our guys in the shipping department. I think that by the time you called we had pretty much caught up with all the back orders. You wouldn’t believe how bad it was. We had to put in bukoo overtime which didn’t make us too happy. But, hey, we’re a team, so we got it done.
That, on top of the CIS conversion really messed things up. Talk about a nightmare. Personally, I liked the old system much better. This one has less screens but they are harder to get to. But then that’s just me. Other people like it just fine.
Oh yeah, that day you called? We had a major blizzard. Most of us live pretty far out of town so most every body was late coming to work. Except me. My driveway is about a mile long, so I have four-wheel drive, so I was one of the first to get here. Other people weren’t so lucky, they had to wait to get shoveled out and didn’t get here until after lunch…so really, you were one of the lucky ones and got your order….even if it was late, you still got it…it coulda been a lot worse.”

By the end of this call the customer who had started out sputtering mad (the item she ordered hadn’t arrived in time for Christmas) was border-line ballistic. She will never do business again with this company and will probably spread the word to her family and friends; or even worse, tell the world about it in her blog.

And to think that this disaster could have been avoided had the rep started her call with that magical phrase “I’m sorry…”

This week when you encounter a frustrated customer looking to you for a remedy, avoid the blame game and focus on what every customer wants — somebody who will take responsibility for fixing their problem.