“I’m sorry, have you been helped yet?”

“No,” I told the waiter.

“I’m sorry, but your server doesn’t seem to be around.”

“You’re a server, right?”  “Yes,” he responded.

“Well, how about you get my wife and me a couple of menus.  We’ve been sitting here for about 10 minutes.”  I then asked him the group of servers around the wall mounted computer?

“Oh, those are waiters training on our new system.”

“During the dinner hour,” I asked?

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Each member of that training wait staff had looked over at our table and promptly ignored our dinner plight.

You ALL recognize that exchange, the service experience STARTS, with an apology and from that point on you’re riding your ski’s down an avalanche of apologies.  In fact, the apology has become the national language of customer service.

It’s a business disgrace.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, will create impact faster than the way you treat your customers.  A single horrific experience can spell doom for a relationship you have spent time developing.

I was at the pro shop for our golf club and the guy behind the desk was on the phone.  I stood there, right in front of him as he continued his conversation.  Not once did he cover the phone and say; “I’ll be right with you.”  Instead, he just kept on talking like I was invisible.  Finally, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Yeah?”  That was the service response; “Yeah?”  He then followed up his eloquent “yeah” with, you guessed it; “Sorry, I’ll be with you in a sec.”  SORRY, SORRY, SORRY.

The saddest part is that not one example I can choose will surprise you. We could trade our horror stories.  They would roll out of your memory at a speed far in excess of your great customer experiences. You and I have come to accept an apologetic process as a regular part of our business day.  Poorly trained, customer facing humans, who will never be held accountable for anything they do.  They will behave like the directions on your shampoo; lather, rinse, REPEAT!  They repeat over and over again until we’re numb.  The worst part of this scenario is that the great majority of us will do nothing.  Hell, we’ll even tip 18% as some sort of reward for being condemned to one of the inner circles of a Dante-like customer service hell.

It’s not a secret.  Companies know what’s going on.  But they lie to themselves.  They believe that an I’m sorry service experience is an anomaly and not the norm.  They shake it off as a grumpy customer.

It’s a shame because Laura and I will NEVER go back to that restaurant.

Companies can fix this.  It’s not some Herculean challenge, instead, it’s surprisingly simple.  Here’s the formula:

• Allocate some resources, usually time, to training and make sure all your people understand they are, as Walt Disney was apt to say, in the “happiness business.” Make your clients happy.  Your teams need to know this and need to LEARN how you want it done.  Your training should be a connected process whose end result is a team of service providers that make a real difference in your client experience.
• Check in on your team. Great service is all about being held accountable.  When there is a bad service experience step in immediately and let your team member know what went wrong.  Let them know you won’t accept it again.  When something goes right, CELEBRATE it so everyone knows your commitment.
• Yeah, it’s all about attitude.  Be happy to see me.  Welcome me instead of apologizing to me.  Great service is about a culture of great attitudes and a great attitude is a CHOICE.

Try those for a starter and watch the change.

We are sketchers.  We’ve always been.  What this means is that we use a different approach to capturing ideas than traditional note taking.  We have created a visual vocabulary that allows us to graphically organize our thoughts.  We use these images to visualize ideas.

This is not a new idea.  During the 1930’s Walt Disney created the idea of storyboarding as a way to “see” how a story would flow, before actually filming a feature.  Storyboarding is now the norm for all Hollywood story development and has virtually been perfected at PIXAR Studios.  In more recent times Mike Rohde brought the idea of sketchnoting to forefront of using pictures to represent ideas.

People are always asking to see Colin and mine’s notebooks and are fascinated at the way we take notes.  For those clients that we are directly working with all of our work starts on flipcharts or whiteboards using the vocabulary we have developed.  We have a web based inventory of our images that we use in our  preliminary idea  concept proposals.

In 2015 we integrated our methodology into a major stage presentation where I delivered the idea and Colin taught the group to use a very simple visual vocabulary to take notes.  Each participant had notebooks and pens to help them get started.  We were amazed at the impact of combining our ideas with our sketching had on the group.

We often get asked about the materials and how they connect to our methodology so I thought I would start 2016 with a guide to our stuff.  FIRST and we have learned this is really important; choose your stuff wisely.  If you love your stuff you will use it.  This means find the pens and pencils that fit YOU.  Discover the best notebooks with the kind of paper you like.  As weird as this sounds it is CRITICAL.  So here’s our stuff.

PENS/PENCIL

• We us the Bic 0.9mm automatic pencils.  They have a soft lead that makes a firm line and erase well (yeah, we make mistakes).
• We use the Precise V5 in extra fine by Pilot.  Great dark black ink and a strong fine line.
• Sometimes we need a little thick line and use Flair pens.
• When we work at large scale (big paper) we use fine point and ultra fine point Sharpies in a wide range of colors.
• To add fill color we use Sharpie highlighters.

NOTEBOOKS

• We have gone through every notebook imaginable in our quest for the  best fit for us.  We are now using Muji Spiral Notebooks.  Incredibly cheap with good paper.  You will want a notebook that will lay flat when open so you can sketch on both sides without shifting your wrist.

LARGER SCALE

• We often work in large scale when working on ideas.  This takes us out of notebooks and puts us into bigger paper.  We use large rolls of “butcher paper”and our glass wall sized panels get filled with images.  We use Pacon Painting Paper Pads (18″ X 12”) most of the  time.  They hold the ink from Sharpies.

• We switch to color coded 24 lbs, 8 1/2″ X 11″ paper when the idea moves to a final phase.  The colors signify the progress of the project.

There you have it.  Give the idea a try.  Remember, it’s not about art, it’s about IDEAS!

Drop us a note for any help you might need.

Despite having been in my field for 31 years I remain a simple apprentice, still learning my trade.

I attend and participate in a great number of meetings, conferences and events every year. I know that many presenters or instructors arrive within a small window of time just ahead of their appointed program and rapidly exit after the last question or the final round of applause. I see their carry-on bag parked just out of sight behind the stage. I get it. When you spend your professional life in hotels, airports and Town Cars, the draw to get home or to the next gig is like a surfer to a good set of waves. I feel this too, but over the years I have learned a valuable lesson that I call:

THE OPPORTUNITY OF CIRCUMSTANCE.

When I get the agenda to a function, I pour over it with a zeal of interest to discover what else is going on beside my humble contribution. Who else is presenting? What are the other topics? Even in the most detailed industry specific outline of topics there is always something I can learn. I map out my time and attend as many sessions as the opportunity of my circumstances will allow.

At a recent 1,000 person meeting, I had the honor of delivering the closing keynote presentation. I arrived the day before and confirmed all the stuff that impacted me, rehearsal times, pre-event set up, checked my shipped artifact package and then moved on to hitting my planned attack points:

• I went to the evening trade show / cocktail party. I walked each aisle and visited with some of the vendors. I listened to their pitch (a short audition to generate interest). I looked at their displays, took a few photos of the ones I found interesting. Met a few people who recognized me from my picture. I discovered some interesting stuff to add to my IDEA JOURNAL.
• The next day I went to the breakfast and chose I a table to visit with attendees. I wanted to know what they thought of the meeting so far and what sessions they were going to attend. This meeting was at a major resort and the temptation of skipping anything to take advantage of what beckoned outside was ever present and understanding what they thought was important gave me some insight.
• I went in to listen to the parade of those speakers scheduled to open the meeting.
• I watched one of the worlds leading economists effortlessly take us through the global financial scene. He had simple graphics with no more than two colors in any graph. In 45 minutes I had take three pages of notes.
• He was followed by a technology expert who, unfortunately was doomed to try to explain the use of a new platform without anyone being able to actually use it. Without a direct physical connection to DOING, the ability to engage a large group in a technology application causes an almost immediate disconnect. An ocean of heads were looking down at their electronic devices as they checked email or market conditions.
• There was a break and then off to breakout sessions. I went to the one on the client experience, a critical piece of sales strategy and one in which the key element of separation and differentiation should be on display. The session was about ¼ full and in 10 minutes the presenter had droned the audience into a passive submission. Too bad, it was a good idea.
• I left and went to another session where a woman was speaking on the skill set of product presentation and she was fantastic. I took two pages of notes, even though I had never heard of the new product. She was just really good.
• Off to my set up and rehearsal for the closing afternoon session. I had talked the client into giving me 90 minutes which gave me a chance to use a full slate of multimedia, interactive tools to help turn an idea into something useful and applicable.
• I attended the dinner to get input on their thoughts and insights into my program , then jumped on the first flight home the next morning.

This is a two night application of THE OPPORTUNITYOF CIRCUMSTANCES law. I took advantage of what had been given me and the result was over five pages on new ideas and notes that may make their way into what we do. Here are the variety of idea journals we have generated over the recent past. Each is brimming with information and concepts.

An apprentice is always learning, always looking for the path to mastery, always aware of THE OPPORTUNITY OF CIRCUMSTANCES.