I
just had an interesting experience at a local, somewhat upscale, pizza place.
Went
in. Ordered a pizza and coke to go. Paid. Waited. Picked up. Left.
In
that roughly 15-minute interval, the young lady at the register never once made
eye-contact with me.
Ø As she was processing
my order, her eyes were glued to the register.
Ø When I paid, she
carefully examined the top of the counter between us.
Ø When my order was
ready, she ogled the pizza cooker guy.
Ø And as she slid the
pizza box and coke across the counter, the best I can figure is she was
checking out a spider crawling up the wall behind me.
Absolutely
NO eye-contact in this entire process with the customer.
I
chimed in on a blog post
this morning (pre-pizza) about one of the culprits in this “failure to see
eye-to-eye”…social media and mobile devices. I deal with it in the
classroom…and in the “real world” as a shopper.
We/you have grown up in an online world, and apparently
there’s now a fear of turning to stone if you actually set eyes on someone, like in the tales of the goddess Medusa. Seems that, if you
looked directly at her, you would instantly turn into a rock. Hard way to go
(snicker, snicker)!
But
that’s mythology, and I’m talking about real-world customer service where
people interact…where there are people who need people to
help them. And part of that interaction is eye contact.
I
hear time and again from colleagues in the professional world that one of their
pet peeves in a job interview is the inability…or outright failure…of the
interviewee to make eye contact during the interview.
Flash
forward to yourself at work. How do you think the customer feels when you
don’t bother to look at him or her?
I won’t ask how you would feel if that were to happen to you because I doubt that
you would even notice or care…feel free to correct me if I’m wrong (sneaky way
to find out who’s reading this blog!)!
So this is a short rant today on a growing
problem as the younger generations morph into the workplace and, at least for
brief periods of time, are detached from their computer screens or mobile devices.
Look at people when you
are interacting with them…you won’t turn to stone, and you will make the other
person feel appreciated…and you just might
convert that person to a return customer!
How cool would that be?!?
“Keep
strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never
corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his
shoes – so as to see things through his eyes.” – Basil Henry Liddell Hart, “Deterrent or Defense [1960], 'Advice
to Statesmen'”
