Friendly. Not familiar.

There’s been a lot of talk about making organizations more human from a customer point of view lately.  I think the most recent iteration of this idea has been inspired by Design Thinking  and the role of empathy in customer relationships [thanks Dan Gray and the gang at CommScrum for getting me reading this literature].

The idea is that if you really understand and care about your customers and show it you can build long-term sustainable relationships with them.  Not exactly breakthrough thinking.

Anyway it’s not the idea that’s bad.  The idea’s fantastic.  And there are organizations that do it and do it well.  It’s authentically who they are. The problem starts when not particularly nice organizations decide they are going to institutionalize niceness.  And, a recent post by Julien Smith got me thinking about something that had just happened to me.

A story.  I called my bank about something a few weeks ago and the person on the end of the phone asked if she could call me Deborah [a little familiar] and then began using my name in every second sentence. Then she asked if she could wish me happy birthday… it was the next week.  I felt completely creeped me out.

My grandmother ran her own business successfully for years.  Her mantra:  “Be friendly.  Not familiar.”  This clearly broke that rule.  This woman didn’t know me.  I didn’t know her.  I wasn’t calling for a personal relationship with her.  I wanted to complete a transaction with the institution.  This was simply a pretence of friendly.  It was manipulative.  She knew it and I knew it.

And this got me thinking about what it must be like to be an employee in an organization that’s decided it’s time to be warm and friendly with customers when the organization has never been warm and friendly before.

Imagine you’re the employee who’s asked to behave this way.  You’re given the scripts – customer says “x”, service rep says “y”.  If you’re the Borg it’s perfect.  If you’re a customer service rep who’s really trying to understand a customer need and meet it?  Not so much.  It must get pretty hollow pretty fast for the employee.  I know it did for the customer.

What do you think? Can you be more human from a customer point of view when you aren’t from an employee point of view? Can organizations institutionalize empathy?

Post script – Had to call the bank again this morning and different person same script… although this lady didn’t ask for permission, just asked if this was Deborah and promptly hung up on me twice!  I’m really feeling the love.

Tags: Authenticity, Behaviour change, Cultural norms, Culture change, Julien Smith, Trust