How To Speak Customer

Google "customer communication," and you are guaranteed to find interaction etiquette—be positive, no jargon, and avoid cliches. But these are transaction tactics. Speaking customer requires relationship practices. Here is an example.

"The crackers are on sale for a dollar less," she barked at the checkout clerk, "it says so on the display." The customer carefully eyeballed her receipt after the grocery store clerk had just bagged her large grocery order. I was the next customer up, and three other customers were in line behind me.

The clerk carefully reviewed his sale list. "Mam, I don't see the crackers on our sale list. Let me run back and check the shelf." He raced to the cracker section while we all waited for his verdict. Returning, he politely told the customer he could not find a sales sign showing a discount. I immediately realized she was uninterested in her stall's impact on the rest of us in the checkout line. "Go back and look again," she demanded, "because I am sure it was there." The clerk again dashed to the cracker shelves.

"I will gladly pay for her crackers," I told the clerk when he returned, out of breath. I spoke loud enough for her to hear my offer. She was unmoved and disinterested. "You are correct, mam," he told her and returned a dollar and change to her out of the cash register. I doubted the accuracy of his compliance. She left without a word.

He warmly thanked me for my patience and generous offer to fund her crackers. "How can someone be so uncaring," I asked him as he began ringing up my grocery items. He spoke in the language of customer. "It was important to her, probably for reasons that had nothing to do with her purchase." His insightful words still ring in my ears.

What is the Language of Customer?

A friend of mine speaks several languages. "How do you know when you have command of a language," I once asked her. "When I stop just thinking in a particular language," she reported, "And start dreaming in that language." I thought it was an excellent metaphor for being customer-centric. We speak customer when we think a lot about the customer, even when we are not face-to-face, ear-to-ear, or click-to-click; when we dream about ways to serve them better; and when their issues keep us up at night. But it is much more.

What does the language of the customer sound like to its recipient? Here are three practices that can help you learn to speak customer.

Stop Thinking It Is "Picture Day"

We have a picture in our heads of how a good customer encounter should be. We judge each real encounter against that mental picture. But even more challenging is that we start the comparison before we even see the book cover to judge. What if each meeting was treated like a new blank screen without expectations or anticipations? We could end up being surprised. We could help manage it to a place of comfort and solace. We could wring the notion of perfection from the picture, leaving it open to an unexpected masterpiece we never dreamed might occur.

The orientation of "It's not picture day" telegraphs we do our very best and move on. A push for perfection can lasso authenticity and pull it to the ground of close-up inspection and judgment. Perfection-seeking is the origin of precise scripts. "Your call is very important to us" rarely sounds like a sincere expression of worth. The pursuit of perfection hinders the make-it-up-as-we-go liberty that allows exploratory to feel at home and speculative to be completely safe.

Show Less Certainty and More Curiosity

Carl Rogers had an eccentric curiosity. He and I had lunch near La Jolla, California, where he worked at the Center for the Studies of the Person. It was the early 1980s; Dr. Rogers was considered one of the world's most renowned psychologists. We were strangers as the salad was served; we were close friends by the time the waiter brought the check. Between courses, he was charmingly open, wonderfully authentic, and warmhearted.

His interrogatory path in our reciprocal dance was not the typical name-rank-serial-number route my heart would have read as a plain vanilla checklist from a communications textbook. Instead, it was eccentric, asymmetrical, and more like wandering in a magical forest than staying on the main road.

"You are the oldest?" he asked. He continued when I nodded in the affirmative, "I was the middle child of six; I sometimes felt insignificant. What does 'oldest' feel like?" We had just started our appetizer, and I already felt like I was with an old friend. His queries were random, sometimes out of left field, always with the interchange of a mirror. He did not interview; we explored with the casualness of a conversation about a movie we both enjoyed. His curiosity was exhilarating, valuable, and new.

Curiosity is fundamentally an optimistic treasure hunt—a gallant search that occurs without proof, guarantee, or map. It reflects a yearning to know much like the resolution of a familiar tune that stops before the last bar. "Remember to wander, "said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, "And let curiosity be your compass."

Find an Entry Point to Empathy

"Make sure that your empathy eats your ego; your ego doesn't eat your empathy. It is not about you," said WD-40 Company CEO Garry Ridge in an interview with Chief Executive blog. Getting to empathy requires an "other" focus. However, nurturing an empathetic relationship must be preceded by creating one. And that requires a compelling entry point.

We all know plenty of "worn thin" salutations customers quickly read as polite disinterest. "How's your day going?" is not generally heard as anything more than a pedantic greeting. The secret to relationship-building is finding a good entry point. It is like the button I observed an elderly woman sporting in the grocery store that read, "Ask me about my granddaughter." Customers light up when there is an "all about you" entry that blazes a trail into their interest frontier.

Most people approach a potentially anxious encounter with antennae raised high in search of clues about the road ahead: Will this situation embarrass me? Will this person take advantage of me? Will I be effective in this encounter? Is there harm awaiting me? Speaking the language of customer involves a spirit of openness with welcoming tones and the relationship ambiance of a family picnic.

Customers long to encounter service providers that can "speak their language." It is a language that a chatbot, robot, or artificial intelligence device can only fake and never speak. Like the essence of any customer experience, it is distinctively human—emotional, engaging, sometimes irrational, but always genuine. Customers love the smell of an association in their language. It sounds like partnership.