Have you already read "
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking",
by Malcom Gladwell? I first heard about Malcom in one of my "
Fast Company" numbers a while ago. Then heard people talking about him and his books. I then bought and listen to Blink's audio CD version, about a year ago. I really enjoyed the book, all the way from start to finish. To the point I would sometimes stay in the car for a few extra minutes in the parking lot before going wherever I was meant to go.
A few days ago, I went to the outlet mall. After shopping for a while, I got hungry and decided to eat something from their food curt. I don't particularly enjoy fast food, but sometimes that's exactly what I want: fast food (hey, I didn't mean bad quality! ... hmm).
Anyway, there were three choices: subway, an italian place with the usual pizza and pasta offer, and a chinnesse food store. I didn't feel like sandwhich, so I discarded subway first. Then looked at the pizzas and ... blink! They looked really bad. The pasta looked bad too. The whole presentation was bad. People waiting in the line didn't seem happy. In one or two seconds, just by looking at all this, my fast food expert-mind resolved (without thinking) to go give the chinnese food store a try.
The chinesse store had their marketing guy standing on the way and offering free samples of chicken-something. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't very polite (neither his body language, nor his words). The sample food was OK. The line was going fast, but got stucked. There was a lady complaining in the register, apparently because she was billed incorrectly. She was being loud. The guy from the register could speak some English. It was my turn. I took the "two meats and fried rice or nooddles or white rice" plate. The lady serving me did not talk to me, but waited for me...
"May I have some rice & nooddles please?' She answered... "No". That was her first word to me, the customer. And it wasn't a friendly "No". There wasn't an "additional fee" or anything else available. The only option she offered me (after seeing I was not moving on), was to surrender one of my meats to get a full portion of rice, a full portion of nooddles, and one meat. "That's not what I want" ... she didn't quite care.
Down the line, a little kid, probably 5 years old was doing the drinks from the soda dispenser machine. I blinked again. Auugh! That was really disgusting now. Needless to say, I did not enjoy my food.
About a few more days ago, I had an extremelly good experience with another fast food chinnese store. Why was that? Whas the food so different? Not really. OK, may be it was a bit better, but not that much. The fact is, once you've blinked the bad experience flag, you probably wont enjoy the rest.
So, anyway, my points are:
- Care who's on your business front line. You can't train them to be polite. You probably can't train them to smile (at least not all the time). You can't train them to be a people's person. But you can train the skills. Don't care so much about experience. Hire the right attitude, the right personality, then train the necessary skills.
- Care about the how, not just the what. Putting the marketing guy to offer free samples wont help if he ain't good at it. The first chinnesse place had a terrific guy offering the free samples and, in one or two secconds, he induced a very possitive blink. You gotta do it, but you gotta do it right (or it might be even worst than not doing it at all!)
- Listen to your blink. Listen to other's blinks. I think I might have been better off just going somewhere else, or simply holding my appetite (that's difficult!). If possible, have your friends, employees and family experience your products or services and tell you their different perceptions. Correct whatever you want and can, then iterate. Get feedback from your customers (not only from the unhappy ones!).
- Care your presentation. Not matter what service or product you sell (or give away), it has to 'blink' good. Blink good can be induced by the product itself (e.g. beautiful design), or may be just by your sales guys creating a possitive blink (BTW, I believe this is also closely related to Keith's Ferrazzi "deep bump" concept). If your front line can't deep bump, then they probably can't induce a positive perception either.
Oh ... and, by the way, don't forget to go read Malcom's latest post on degree of difficulty. After reading it, we understand why sometimes it is hard to realize all this in a clear and easy way. If we are not an insider, (i.e. not the customer, not the one doing the job, etc), then you might not notice a few things; you might have an absolutely different perception. That's why it is usually so hard to auto-analyze yourself or your own company. So, one more time, go ask your friends, family and employees to do that for you. Repeat this periodically. But also remember Jerry Weinberg's Marvin's Second Great Secret: Repeatedly curing a system that can cure itself will eventually create a system that can't. If your employees can fix it, tell them to, and let them do. If they can't, teach them how.
