"Satisfying the customer is a race without a finish."
- Vernon Zelmer, Managing Director of Rank Xerox.
Recommended book of the week:
NUTS! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success
- Kevin Freiberg & Jackie Freiberg, Bard Press, Austin Texas
This week's customer service "moment of truth".
Correctly pronouncing a customer's name.
"What's in a name?' For most people, a lot.
A couple of years back I was conducting a series of customer service workshops for a major airline and at the commencement of each two-day session, I would get the flight attendants to briefly introduce themselves giving name, rank, serial number etc. During one of the workshops, a woman introduced herself as Zorica (Zo-ric-ar), pronouncing her name exactly as it was spelt. My intuition told me that this was not the correct pronunciation of her name. I interrupted her introduction and asked if how she had pronounced her name was in fact correct. She replied, "not exactly, but that's what people call me" and then went on to say that the correct pronunciation was Zar-rit-za.
The reaction of her workmates was amazing. "We've worked with you for over eight years and how come we never knew that?" was one response. My question was how come none of you ever bothered to ask?
I then asked Zorica how she would prefer I pronounce her name. "Zaritza would be nice", she quietly replied.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise that I had immediately won a friend, all because I dared to go with my gut feeling and courteously ask for the correct pronunciation of someone's name.
A more recent experience at a team development day involved a woman whose name was Deirdre, usually pronounced 'Deardree'. Her choice however was to have her name pronounced in the traditional way as Deardra.
Another trend in people's names is for parents to become quite creative in the naming of their children by creating completely new names, reviving long forgotten names from the past, and using names from other cultures. It is important to realise that many of these names are not pronounced how they are spelt.
As cities and countries become more multicultural and companies pursue global expansion, correctly pronouncing customers names is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what business will need to embrace to meet the challenges of satisfying the ever-changing needs and wants of customers from all around the world.
The lesson is, 'never assume'. It takes so little time and zero expense to ask people how they pronounce their name. Why not take the time to ask, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the response.
Until next week, stay true to yourself and to your customers. And remember great customer service relationships happen by design, in the moment, moment by moment.
