Word Of the Week #11: Recognition
April 20, 2009 by Susan Clarke
Recognition: acceptance of an individual as being entitled to consideration or attention.
How many times have you entered a business and are not acknowledged? It happens too many times. Do you want to know what I think? I don’t need to pay for abuse!
Ultimate Recognition
If you want to be memorable and develop a long lasting relationships, you need to recognize and pay attention to the people you come in contact with. I suggest you determine how many seconds it should take to recognize your customers, guests, members and clients. Secondly, you need to talk about it with your staff so they understand the importance of recognition.
My book is titled, “The Fun-Damental Secrets of Service: How to have fun and make your customers feel good about spending their money.” I believe that if you make people feel good about doing business with you they will come back, spend more money and spread the word.
This week focus your attention on the people that you come in contact with and recognize them immediately! Watch the response that you get from them and how it makes them feel.
Reader Responses
“You are right on. I can remember when I was a Junior Manager, this would happen to me. I would think, “Hey, here I am, I am not invisible.” I would be exploding on the inside with thoughts, ideas, information and just because I was not in the business for several years, didn’t mean I didn’t have great ideas. Now that I am the “Senior” Manager and have been in the business now for 35 years, I have made sure I do not do this to younger managers. My problem now is that I build the Junior Managers up so much, they think they are better than they are, Ha. LOL. Oh well, the price we pay sometimes.” — Don Vance
“WOW back to you………..Raise the Bar — How exciting are your dreams? Most people don’t aim too high and miss—-they aim too low and hit! Horse sense is what keeps horses from betting on what people will do.” — John Beck
“When I worked at Central Institute for the Deaf (CID), we would always invite anyone who gave at least $1,000 a year, to the Institute for the Graduation ceremonies. On graduation day, the kids who were graduating -(Which meant being mainstreamed because their speech and their lipreading skills were so good that they could handle being with normal hearing children in their home school districts. Graduation was based on this skill, not on age or completion of certain grades. Sometimes the graduates were as young as 5 or as old as 15.) – the kids who were graduating would each give a personal speech. It was always a very moving experience. Also graduating would be the newest audiologists and the newest teachers who were getting their Masters degrees from Washington University. CID is the Speech and Hearing Department of Washington University. Anyway, on this one particular graduation day, a family who was considering giving a sizeable donation to the Institute ($500,000) was present for the festivities and had the attention of all the big wigs. Another contributor, a 92-year-old lady that no one really knew much about, was also planning on attending. I (not being a big wig) was assigned to help her because of her age etc., although she had driven herself there and really didn’t need anyone’s help. In the process of talking to this woman, I learned that she was one of the very first teachers at CID over 75 years prior. What a thrill that was for me! I introduced her to the President of the Board, the Director of the Institute, and all the very newest teachers. She had a great time that day. A few weeks later, her lawyer called us and told us she had been considering making a significant contribution to CID and after her recent visit, decided to firm up the details. That gift was one million dollars! I couldn’t believe it. I called to personally thank her and reminded her of who I was. She said she remembered me and went on to tell me that “it is not often that you go to a place as a complete stranger and leave that place feeling like a very important person and when you are old, you don’t have too many days where you feel important at all. It was one of life’s greatest lessons to me and if I ever get around to doing a Signposts of My Life Album, it will be recorded there. Every day in this business of album-making and helping families preserve their photos and their stories, we meet very special people. From the outside they may look pretty ordinary. We might even make judgements about their ability or inability to be consultants or their ability or inability to make purchases. But the truth of the matter is, we never really know what another person is capable of. People need to feel good; they need to feel important. There is so much pain in people’s lives that is often not visible. Let us be the first maybe, to lift them up and brighten their day. Let us help them to feel good about doing business with us. Let us help them to feel important, that they are valuable.” — Deborah Timko