As a mother, I often tell my girls to always consider each side of a story and to be cautious about thinking that everyone understands things as they do. This lesson could certainly be used in the service industry. In all of our businesses, internally we "talk" a language that only "we" understand. It may be acronyms, certain words that have double meanings, numbers, etc. Several of my team members can speak an entire sentence using acronyms, and I would understand, but of course, our customers would not. An acronym that we use everyday is SPT, which we call "Spit" and is a very important database/program. Telling our customers that we "will check the 'Spit' to confirm their project status" would no doubt cause confusion.
“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool” ― C.G. Jung
Employees can get comfortable, to the point of lazy, in their jobs. It is so important to teach them to always be customer focused- they should consider what will and won't make sense to a customer. Leading with this focus will always prompt them to consider what they are saying, how they are saying it, and ensuring that the customer understands what has been said. Without this understanding, you have put at risk the building of the customer connection that leads to loyalty. We need to make sure that each employee is knowledgeable of their own company jargon. You would be surprised about the innocence behind the use of terms that employees thought were acceptable and understandable. Case and point: a couple of decades ago I was a hotel sales manager, and we had a number of "in house" terms that we would toss around. "BEO" for banquet event order, "book" for reserve, and my favorite, "floor," used for when you went to the meeting level to check on a group. To further explain my point, one of my conventions was having their meeting at the hotel. As I was walking out of my office to go and greet the meeting planner, I heard the assistant on the phone say, "No, Jana is not in her office, she is on the floor......" To this day, I wonder if that person calling was worried and confused about why I would even be on the floor.
jar.gon: The language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people. Confused unintelligible language. (Merriam-Webster Online: Dictionary)
When we teach training classes, we make a point of including a section that covers company jargon. As a group, we will make a list of words, phases, and/or acronyms used in their office/company. Each class usually has a discussion on "is it or isn't it" jargon for a couple of the words listed. These words become common to use, but not always for the customer to understand. Each of us can associate with a situation where we clearly did not "get" what was being said. Nothing is more painful or discouraging as when you are made to feel embarrassed or inadequate for not understanding. In the service industry, it is our job to meet the customer right where they are, in every way. From a customer perspective, having a service personnel that asks questions to ensure you understand, reads your body language, and simply cares about the outcome of the exchange you are having, is so impressive and rewarding.
The
Corporate Executive Board conducted multiple surveys of more than 7,000 consumers, and one of their key findings from their research was what consumers want from marketers is simply
simplicity. Consumer loyalty comes from many aspects and growing quickly is the ease of understanding information they can trust.
It is our responsibility to ensure that our customers find it easy, enjoyable and understandable when conducting business with us. So test your organization, how easy do you make it for your customers? Has jargon slipped into your customer conversations? Need help keeping it simple?
