How to make work easier and happier

Posted August 30th, 2009 by Dr James Pratt

In the previous Success Marketing Strategy blog I made the observation that people who accept these ideas and dedicate themselves to becoming truly masterful customer service diplomats do advance in their careers.

There is yet another big compelling reason to get good at Customer Service Diplomacy which is to make your present work easier and more pleasant.

Where does much of the stress and irritation that accumulates during the work day that makes us tired and grumpy, that causes our frequent headaches.

Where does that stress come from?

Much of it develops from the little frictions and conflicts that occur all day long. Many of these can be eliminated with customer service diplomatic skill.

There is no doubt that we feel better when we get positive feedback. In transactional analysis the commonly used term is positive strokes. Sometimes these are even called warm fuzzies, the opposite by the way of cold pricklies.

A positive stroke can be like a mental hug. Anyone in a customer service position has great opportunity to stimulate this kind of desirable, pleasant, positive feedback. It's easy to get it. All you have to do is give it. It is universal law that whatever we give out comes back to us multiplied.

Giving out these kind of strokes is easy. Here are just a few basic examples:

1. Thank you, it's good to see you again.

2. I sure enjoy talking to you.

3. I appreciate you.

4. That's a sharp jacket, tie, outfit.

5. That's a great choice you've made.

Set a goal for the day of how many of those little strokes you are going to give to people. It can actually dramatically change the nature of your on the job experiences. You can see results from it almost instantly, for sure in a matter of days.

A good positive discipline was invented by Doctor Edward Kramer. He created a little yellow note that resembled a telegram and called it the thank you gram. He initially created this for his own family so that he, his wife and children could take a few minutes at the end of each day to experience and express gratitude for pleasant experiences they had had with other people during the day.

Each family member wrote out and mailed several thank you grams each day. Readers Digest wrote an article about the Kramer family's unusual thank you gram habit and before long many famous Hollywood celebrities, top executives and other prominent people were buying thank you gram pads from Doctor Kramer and following the thank you gram habit.

The idea behind this habit is a good one. Too often we focus on the unpleasant occurrences of the day and forget the good things that happened. At the end of each day you might want to take a few minutes to jot short thank you notes on note paper, the back of your business card or some device like the thanks-a-million note and send them to several customers you enjoyed dealing with that day.

You might say something very simple like, "Thanks for coming in and brightening my day." "Thanks for your patience." This habit will program your mind to accumulate good experiences during the day. The focus of your thinking will change.

Of course everybody has experiences on the job that are annoying or unpleasant. A supervisor, a co-worker or a customer may be unreasonable, other problems occur. What happens during the day is less important though than how you react to what happens.

If you permit an unpleasant incident to take control of your attitudes and feelings and ruin your day, who wins?

That doesn't benefit you, your company or the customers.

In his classic speech 'The Strangest Secret,' Earl Nightingale said that the secret to success or failure, happiness or unhappiness is that we become what we think about most. If we focus on the unpleasant occurrences, complain about those situations, talk about them, dwell on them we become an unhappy, unpleasant individual and we attract more of the same.

When we discipline ourselves to shake the unpleasant off, like water off a ducks back, and focus on the pleasant people in situations encountered during the day we become a positive, pleasant person.

Does one type of personality lead to career success more than the other?

Absolutely. Surveys and studies including one quoted in the prestigious Harvard Business Review of executives and managers asking what factors contribute most to a person's career advancement revealed that only 15% of the reasons are skill or aptitude oriented. 85% are attitude related.

By working on becoming a master customer service diplomat you automatically are also developing more positive productive attitudes.

This concludes our conversation about Customer Service Diplomacy. We're now going to shift gears and in your next Success Marketing Strategy blog that you'll receive in just a couple of days.

I'm going to talk about the next big thing in marketing.


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