Zachary Aldwin Milkshake in the Boardroom
I came across a story detailing a glorious description of a flight to England from Zimbabwe that went wrong this week (you can read a full description on the Emerging Ideas blog).

In a nutshell there was a cancelled flight via Kenya and the story describes the drama that followed on passengers leaving the airport for a hotel, horrible hotel service, and unhelpful immigration. While the story reads like a comic, it was a pretty awful experience.

Underpinning the entire story is the fact that all the people involved — the stewardess, the gate agent, the lounge hostess — were mere automated minions happy to regurgitate the official lines from the rule book but completely unable to relate to their clients when things go wrong.

The gate official, for example, while reassuring people that they are going to a five star hotel, has never stayed at a hotel, has no idea what hotels provide as services and amenities, and is completely ill equipped to answer any questions about it to a bunch of frustrated passengers at 1am in the morning.

He has no ability to empathise with his clients.

We are so happy to have a system in place for dealing with disasters that we forget what may be required for that system to actually work seamlessly.

We forget that the people affected by the disaster or event are human and may get frustrated or upset when we cannot relate to them.

Here are two smaller examples of failure to relate: First, Econet’s emergency top-up service for their Buddie system.

On the surface it sounds amazing — you are out of airtime but need to make an emergency call or message, dial the pre-set code and you can top up with a temporary loan of airtime to get help.

Here is where the system fails. You need to have less than 5 cents of airtime to access the service.

Yet, as any Buddie user will tell you, somewhere around the 13 cents of credit mark you are unable to make calls or send texts and need to recharge.

Until you spend that extra 8 cents of airtime you cannot access the loan, and you can’t spend it.

The person who designed the system cannot relate to the user experience — they have no idea what is actually happening on the ground.

Second example; another IT one. Recharging Zol’s broadband with their Pay-now option. It is a great idea being able to recharge without going out of the office and being able to use my Visa card conveniently and easily.

Convenient until I get to the verification stage with my bank that needs a fully functional internet connection — the very thing I am trying to recharge.

Best solution to date is recharge before your internet cap runs out. Again a system designed without the user experience in mind.

The scary part about the last two examples is that there is no human face for me to deal with, yet I can tell that whoever created the system has no empathy with me.

They simply have no idea what I go through when I try to use the service (or they would have fixed it by now).

Empathy goes a long way to deal with disgruntled customers. It’s the ability to deeply understand the thoughts and emotions of your customer, and making sure that they know that, too.

Deeply understand not just regurgitate superficial textbook drivel from an operations manual.

Understand my experiences as a user and what I am actually going through, not just ticking the ‘we have a backup option’ box by creating an application from your office to stick on a website.

Understand that dealing with clients is more than simply going through a checklist of possible solutions.

True empathy comes from understanding what people want and feel in a situation. It was Valentine’s Day on a Sunday this year.

I can bet you that thousands of men woke up on the day and thought ‘Damn it I forgot!’ and needed to get a quick gift to show the love of their life that they cared.

In this case they are not looking to pick out a special bouquet for the occasion but are looking for the quick fix that gets them out the dog box.

I overheard two cashiers at a supermarket commenting on the brisk sales of roses and Lindt chocolates that morning.

The funny thing was the two items were miles apart in the shop.

Clearly no one had thought about this before the morning started and now, even though sales had clearly pointed the way forward, no one was going to move the two together preferably near the entrance, or consider offering a combo.

They saw but they did not see. They heard but they did not understand.

Develop a service of culture that includes empathy. This has to come from the top down. It has to be modelled to our staff first before they can take it onto our clients.

Understanding the Why we do things, not just the What, when it comes to dealing with clients helps to build this.

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