adminon this ideal. What is implied by loving yourself?
There are both negative and positive aspects to “loving yourself”. The negative attributes are self-centredness and arrogance which are detrimental to customer service.
The positive manifestation of loving yourself include bathing properly, brushing your teeth, properly maintained hair and beard, well suppressed natural odours, putting on well pressed and clean clothes, well polished shoes.
Self-neglect is injurious to good customer care. However, most of these have to be done moderately.
For instance, using overpowering perfumes can also be counter-productive.
Looking after yourself demonstrates that you love yourself. This also increases your confidence levels, which reflects positively on the customer.
Treating yourself in a dignified manner will enable your customers to treat you with respect.
Looking after yourself well creates a conducive environment to lock the customer into a deal.
The crucial step in persuading the customer to do business with you is by convincing him or her to be comfortable with you.
The disappointing aspect of life is that most people are not comfortable even with themselves.
Are you comfortable with yourself?
How then do you expect customers to be comfortable with you if you are not comfortable with yourself?
One reason why customers refuse to buy from you is because you cannot buy yourself.
People who cannot buy from themselves do not view themselves as miracles delivered on earth for a specific purpose of making this planet a better place to live in.
The doubts that we have about ourselves manifest themselves to the customer as the lack of confidence in what we are doing.
There is nothing which is as irritating as displaying your confusion in front of a customer.
Lack of confidence can actually result in poor customer care. Of course, one cannot be expected to move around saying that he or she can buy himself or herself but their behaviour points to that effect. However, you should not over-price yourself as this will be make you look like an ego- centric, self-indulgent and arrogant person.
Looking after yourself enables you to be attractive to neighbours. It is not big favours that you extend to your neighbour that make you “their best neighbour” but the small often inexpensive gestures of stretching your hand to offer solutions to their daily challenges.
You don’t expect your neighbour to remember you for buying them the most expensive, mature, highly intoxicating whisky but by buying them beer or whisky that meets their exact taste.
You can only know this by investing time to understand your neighbour.
Most people expect customers to accept them without making an effort to please them.
Sometimes we fail to create rapport with people who matter in our lives by failing to do the basics.
Most products which companies sell are designed to give hope and convenience.
Do customers acquire hope when they interact with you or they are discouraged?
One of the recent conventional thinking is one is only able to extend love to their neighbour after loving themselves first.
All the people that I have seen seem to be attracted to people who pay particular attention to themselves and are less attracted to people who are not conscious about their appearances.
All customers dream of meeting “angels” instead of “hosts” when doing business.
Being born beautiful or handsome is not a guarantee to becoming an “angel” if your soft skills are “ghostly” and your personal upkeep is not up to scratch.
People who are “handsome from afar” can actually be angels if their personal upkeep and soft skills are up to scratch.
How many people enjoy hugging a person with bad breath or someone whose armpits smell badly?
The challenge of mankind is to expect customers to be understanding and tolerant when we (service providers) are not.
If you find yourself in this unattractive customer care doldrums do not kill yourself as yet.
There is still hope for change. Just read a lot of literature about customer care and try to implement some of the ideas slowly.
I can guarantee you before the end of this year you will be a service champion.
Benefits of good neighbourliness
“Loving your neighbour” opens new opportunities for your business. A loved neighbour returns the favour by preaching about the benefits of love he or she is receiving from you.
A “loved neighbour” volunteers information on how you can deploy your resource to attain competitive advantage in your market.
“A loved neighbour” could become an integral part of your company’s value chain which competitors will have serious difficulties when trying to imitate your business model or investigate your sources of competitive advantage.
The writer is a Managing Consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected]
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