Shelter’s Edge

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of requests in workshops for advice on how to handle difficult “customers,” i.e. potential adopters. One woman phrased it this way, “I need help figuring out how to please someone who simply doesn’t seem to want to be pleased.” Nope – I’m not going to help with that, and here’s why:

If things are running well in your organization, the attitudes of your visitors/customers most likely span a pretty normal bell curve – with the small ends to the far left and right representing folks who are pretty much easy no matter what and folks who are pretty much difficult no matter what, respectively. In the case of either of these extremes, the person’s attitude likely has a whole lot more to do with who they are than with how you’re behaving – so there’s very little you can do to change the situation. It’s all of the people in the big bump of the bell curve – the mainstream base of your customers – where you want to focus the majority of your energy. (By the way, if you don’t have a normal bell curve and the bulk of your visitors are cranky and ready for a fight, you’ve got bigger, systemic issues that need attention, such as policies that feel unfair to your public. If that’s the case, no amount of “customer service” training will turn the tide; it’s time to seek consultation on policies and practices.)

But assuming that you don’t have big hairy policy issues that need addressing, let’s turn your attention and energy on that large group of people in the middle of the bell curve. How about trying Appreciative Inquiry (AI)? AI is a positive approach to change and system improvement that focuses first and foremost on a system’s strengths and past accomplishments. As the name implies, the two basic tools of AI are appreciation (attention, focus) and inquiry (asking good questions, searching for meaning). Rather than asking “What’s the problem here?,” AI asks “What’s working here?” Fully studying and understanding your conditions for success provides the building blocks and motivation to construct a better future. AI can be a great tool for your organizational strategic planning and for team building, but for today, let’s just look at how to use AI to hone your relationship skills with your customers.

Start with a simple inquiry – your best-ever experience as a customer. It’s most meaningful to take some quiet time to think about these questions and then have a conversation with a colleague or two to delve into the details. After fully exploring your best experiences as customers, you will be able to construct a list of the things that make for these fantastic experiences. And then, of course, you can begin to plan for how to implement this kind of service in your own organization. The beauty of this approach is that since it’s based on your own personal experiences, you and your staff have a felt sense of what you want to achieve – kind of like once you learn to ride a bike, you can get back on and hit that center balance just by feel.

You might be thinking that you really want to know what to do when confronted with those difficult people – and I sympathize – so we will cover that one of these weeks. But in the meantime, consider the words of David Cooperrider, professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University: “Human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about.” In other words, you and your staff can build your customer rapport around understanding and solving problems, or you can build it around understanding and implementing best-ever customer experiences. Which one sounds more successful for your organization?

Tags: appreciative inquiry, customer service

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.