egyii blog

For our updated overview, please see:

Egyii Overview May 2009 

Thank you.

Trip & James, Team Egyii, Singapore

Organisations are doing a lot these days to enhance the ‘customer experience’. They are training and motivating employees to engage their customers at a higher level; and they are putting in systems, processes and policies to make doing business easier and more enjoyable for their customers.

We at Egyii ask: how can our employees engage their customers so that they really ‘connect’ with them and leave them feeling great about the organisation?

What actually happens between the employee and the customer as they are interacting with each other makes one of the most lasting impressions. How a customer feels when she walks away from an interaction remains with her long after she has forgotten about the content.

 How can an employee create that customer connection that leaves them with such a great feeling?

First, the employee must be authentic.

This means he must be aware of his feelings when interacting with the customer. He must use this awareness to respond to his customer with his ‘truth’, the genuine emotion that he is experiencing.

Of course, if he is feeling irritated he does not show irritation, but he does acknowledge it himself and deal with it so that when he does respond to the customer the signals he sends are genuine. If he does not acknowledge his feelings he will communicate a ‘false’ persona to his customer which will be picked up, probably unconsciously. The result will be that the customer will leave with a slightly negative impression of the employee. There will certainly be no memorable customer experience.

This ongoing self-awareness on the part of the employee is crucial if the customer is not to feel that he is just ‘going through the motions’. Too many times customers experience employees as ’superficial’ and ‘insincere’ because they are just acting out and have no connection with their real selves.

Second, the employee must become aware of his customer’s emotions and connect with their ‘truth’.

Often a customer will communicate with a lot of words and gestures, most of which do not represent where they are really coming from.

If an employee wants his customer to feel truly understood, he must pay attention and find the words, gestures and emotion that tell him “I am here.” By acknowledging the customer’s real thoughts and feelings he creates a bridge between them that the customer appreciates. Finding the customer’s ‘truth’ requires paying close attention and using intuition to sense and interpret the signals they are sending.

Connecting with your customer, then, happens when the employee’s ‘truth’ and the customer’s ‘truth’ are in a dance with each other. When an employee taps into his real self and eliminates all the posturing and acting, then he begins to be authentic. And when he takes the trouble to really pay attention to his customer and discover their real self, then he connects and a great customer experience is enabled.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Kare Anderson titles her recent blog ‘Coddle and Keep Customers – Even in a Cold Economy’.  She talks about a cafe near her home in Sausalito, California that now offers fresh-baked pastries and coffee to drive-by customers.

Now let’s transfer this image of ‘coddled customers’ to the experience people have with their banks. My Collins Concise English Dictionary defines ‘coddle’ as ‘to treat with indulgence’. Wouldn’t this kind of experience be the kind of thing that would drive you to a bank and keep you there long term?

Yes, we know that banks are designing comfortable, even luxurious environments where their customers can lounge over a fresh-brewed coffee. But while coffee and pastries are a cafe’s product, coffee and sofas are not a bank’s product. To coddle us, banks must treat us with indulgence, not just provide nice furniture.

It’s time that banks put aside their product innovations and selling tactics and get to know what the words ‘treat us with indulgence’ mean in their context. Here are just three suggestions:

Firstly, treat your customers like the intelligent people that they are. This means knowing your area of expertise backwards and only offering the highest quality, well-considered advice.

Secondly, be one hundred percent present in the presence of your customers. Pay attention to them and respond to what they are communicating instead of your own idea of what you want to say.

Thirdly, get your own attitude sorted out. Make sure that you have a strong purpose and are clear about what your personal values are, so that you come across as sincere, authentic and caring.

Treating bank customers with indulgence means taking them under your expert wing and looking after them. That’s all we really want. We can get the coffee round the corner.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore

Your sense of identity determines how you interpret the downturn, how you interact with clients and colleagues, what you crave after…and so on.

So how do you identify yourself?

By the things you have? A fancy car?

By the things you do? A cool job?

By the people you associate with? One of the in-crowd?

By comparing yourself with others? A winner?

By the thoughts you have? I think, therefore I am?

By now it may just be dawning on you how limited these measurements are in defining your identity, and how much stress you give yourself by searching for yourself through them.

Once we all realise that we are just the person we are in every moment, and that we continually change from moment to moment, then we will stop our craving for more and enjoy being simply present.

So the next time you are in front of a client, forget about your sales target or your great expertise and just be there in your client’s world with them in that moment. Look at them. Hear them. And start building a truly authentic relationship.

James Irvine, Team Egyii, Singapore