Episode #199: ANTICIPATING PERSONAL STORIES BEHIND BUSINESS VENEERS

Exceptional customer service starts with an understanding that the complexities of life are behind every business veneer we encounter. All business professionals have lives that can directly affect their work attitudes. As service providers, we don’t always know what our customers are encountering in their personal lives. In fact, we have no idea how good, or bad their day, week, month, or year is going. However, we can always be sensitive to the notion that they are navigating life challenges, and that some of these challenges may affect their professional disposition. With that in mind, we invite you to spend five minutes to examine, and consider how to weave these understandings into your service mindset. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky . Let's fight to show.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into this Simple Biz 360 podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, and I'm your host for episode 1 9 9. Can you Believe we're here already Three business tips in five minutes is the flavor of the day. We're in the t-shirt and caps mode, so it's summertime, happy summer, we're dressing down, having some fun, light and breezy episodes. And, and now we're on now on Rumble tv, which is so cool. YouTube, I G T v Gab TV in 28 listening platforms. So today we are gonna be honing in on anticipating stories behind stories. So what do we mean by that? Well, we don't always know when we're dealing with our associates and friends and our customers, you know, what's going on in their life. We don't know if they've been up all night , uh, with the dog , uh, throwing up and they've cleaned up vomit five times and they've taken the dog out six times and they haven't got a night's sleep. Or the baby's, you know, having a tough time teething. Uh, we don't know if they've had a car accident on the way in Car I issues, health issues, a death in the family. They may be , um, you know, dealing with and grappling with. They may have home repair issues, they may have marital issues, they may have financial issues, they may have social media, hot water issues. Maybe they're getting embroiled in something that , uh, really causing them some anxiety. What about anxiety attacks? Right? What about migraine headaches? We don't always know what's going on behind the scenes, but whatever, you know, whatever the case is, it's almost healthy for us as business professionals to anticipate that there may be a story behind the veneer of that person just being in the office and being in front of us. You know, hey, well it looks like they're in a bad mood today. Maybe something's going on. Well, you know, you've gotta anticipate that maybe sometimes you can't even tell, but they're just a little, you know, a little grumpy and so, you know, something might be going on. So we just throw out some suggestions that , you know, be conscious of this assumptive, you know, maybe zone if you will. And just always kind of go into the day thinking that, okay, I've gotta be able to extend a little bit of rope. I've gotta be a little more patient than I , um, wanna be because there may be something going on here, and I know I'm like that. I can be a little bit of an eager beaver and a little bit impatient sometimes , sometimes. And my wife always is the , you know, she kind of just puts me in my place a lot and says, Jeff, just slow down. You know, maybe something's going on there, you know, you , you just don't know anymore. So, you know, try to be sympathetic and , and try to be empathetic when it, when it's appropriate. You know, if you, if if someone's been going through a tornado damage in their home and you've never had tornado damage in your home, you can be sympathetic, but you can't be empathetic. You can be empathetic and we suggest you, you know, deploy that genuine empathy if you have been through tornado damage and they're now through it, and now you can talk about it. Certainly, you know , we can be empathetic with, with, you know, sicknesses and so forth. So, you know, the , these are some things that help comfort people. Um, they may end up sharing some things with you that help you understand their mood or their, you know, their mindset that particular day. And it's a great opportunity to, you know, talk to him and share and be a, be a friend and, and , uh, pray with him or whatever. But, you know, certainly dig down deep inside. Just, you know, kind of assume that there's always something going on. I mean, life is unimaginable, sometimes stranger than fiction. Think about this. I've always said if you're an author and you take, you know , you go on a any block in any development, any town, any county, any, any, any city, you know, any state rather. Um, and you, you write a chapter on that family in that home, and then you go to the next home and you write a chapter in your book on them about their lives, you'd have a bestselling book, I think, on every street because we just can't make this stuff up. You know, life is stranger than fiction and it really is. And so, you know, there're always , it's always something behind it. I , I have a prop with me today and it's a blanket and it looks like a pretty , uh, you know, bland blanket, right? So anyway , I had a situation not too long ago or , or you know, we were having a , uh, holiday and somebody needed a blanket to take home in the car with them . They said, dad, you have a blanket. I said, sure, I'll go grab one. This was the closest one I could get. I said , Hey, but make sure I get that blanket back, dad. Pretty crappy blanket. I mean, what's the deal here? I said, well, a blanket's special to me. Okay. So I don't know if they, you know, teased me behind my back. They may have, they may have chuckled at it, but nonetheless they got the blanket back to me and they said, you know, wait , we knew how important this was to you. So, you know, here it is. Well, what's this blank ? What's the story behind this blanket? Well, I, I ran my first marathon. It took me about 16 to 20 weeks to train. I ran it in New York City, 3 million people watched and I got the fever, right. 30,000 people ran it. I enter a marathon in Delaware and Maryland the next , uh, month. So a month later I go in one that has 450 people. About 12 people watched it. And an Alberta Clipper came zooming through, dropped some snow temperatures plummeted, and about 170 people , um, had to withdraw from the race as they ran. I was one of the 250 that made it to the end. And at the very end of that race, you got this blanket given to you to warm up. So that blanket has about 24 weeks of training behind it and a story on a day that I'll never forget behind it. So I don't wanna lose it. So that's the story behind the story. We're gonna dip back today. Lost on the shuffle. Oh man. 1 99, right? I went to the country to run this marathon. We're gonna go back to the country. With who? Steve Miller Band . It's called Going to the Country, 1970. Enjoy it . We will see you in 168 .