"It does not matter what you say. It only matters exactly what you say."
Amazing speaker Warren Evans said this in a training session I recently attended. And it is so true, isn't it? Warren was talking about professional speaking. But this is also true in the customer experience business.
Let me give you a recent example. I was approaching a longish line at the airport (is there any other kind?), and the staff person monitoring the line pointed and said to me, "You should go over there". I explained that a previous person had told me to come to this line.
Going through my head is... do any of these people know what they are talking about? Am I going to wait in the wrong line? Maybe I should just forget about buying the upgrade. More discussion. Finally he says to me, "Yes, they can help you here, but this is a long line. The agents over there can also do this, and there is no line up there."
Good intentions, right approach, not well executed. Instead of making me feel that I was getting excellent service, I felt mildly annoyed. But I was actually getting pretty great service, wasn't I? It just didn't make that impact.
