Life Has No Pause Button
Do you have a friend or acquaintance that needs to be right? You know the type, they are usually perfectionists whose resolute concern with being validated eclipses everything else – regardless of the outcome.
I have experienced this with a close friend who is a perfectionist. Last year, he and I disagreed on whether a new Omega-3 fish oil product would lower my cholesterol by more than twenty percent. In trying to lower my expectations, my friend insisted that I was being too optimistic.
After my initial blood work, I logged my cholesterol number and took the fish oil dietary supplement as prescribed. After ten weeks, I had my blood work completed once again and waited impatiently for the results. By coincidence, I was with my friend when I received the phone call from my doctor’s office.
Good news, a thirty percent reduction in cholesterol.
When I shared the news with my friend, his face turned sour with scorn and contempt. “Stop gloating.” he said. He immediately accused me of bragging. That part wasn’t important to me. “I am happy that I resolved my cholesterol problem without any pharmaceutical drugs, that’s all.” I said “I thought you would be happy too.”
Unfortunately, my good health took a back seat to his need to be right. With different view points, we are still close friends and I have learned to navigate around his perfectionism and I am sure he has become patient with my optimism.
Successful service professionals learn in time that it is much more desirable to be happy rather than right. After all, service professionals must exist in the paradoxical world where the customer is always right.
Young service professionals, who are being trained to serve customers, compare this statement to their actual experience and are struck with the obvious incongruity. A newly hired service trainee soon learns that customers are sometimes wrong and even rude.
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Some customers become temporarily obstinate in their rightness. The customer views you, the service professional, as an adversary and strives for a win/lose outcome in which they win and you lose. Naturally, the customer believes he is right and he looks forward to his victory.
Successful service professionals learn in time that it is much more desirable to be happy rather than right.
Only a patient and adaptable customer service professional learns how important the “pause” is when dealing with customers who seek only to be right.
An experienced service person deliberately pauses, takes a deep breath and thinks rationally about what to do next as the customer’s onslaught continues. This three step process is appropriately called the split second response.
The split second response permits a service professional to back away from the situation at hand, view the big picture and formulate a response which will result in a mutually beneficial outcome. Seasoned professionals know and understand that when a service professional gets upset they will make the best speech they’ll ever regret. Since life has no pause button – it’s up to us to slow down and gain perspective.
The below video shares additional insight about The Power Of The Pause.
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