Chip, and Dan Heath, two brothers,
who amazingly live on 2 different coasts somehow managed to get together to
write The Power of Moments – Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact.
At first glance, this book doesn’t seem to be a business book, so why
would I review it on this site? Well, you’re wrong; it is a book about
Business. They do claim to teach one how
to create moments in one’s personal lives, such as birthdays, confirmation, wedding,
anniversaries, and bar mitzvahs, but they also discuss how to create special,
and memorable “work” moments both for a company’s employees, and its
customers. They discuss onboarding of
new employees, and creating special “moments” of customer contacts. However, they do warn about overdoing it. Not
every single moment at work can be an extraordinary memorable experience,
because then the moment is not out of the ordinary; it’s just ordinary. You can’t have highs without the lows. You
can’t celebrate every employee’s arrival at work in the morning with a cheer,
and a song. That’s just going overboard.
What do they advocate
celebrating? The onboarding, and training
experience, the promotions, and special customer interactions, such as the one millionth
customer, etc.
How do they create these
moments? By incorporating certain
characteristics, such as elevation (building peaks, breaking the script),
insight (trip over the truth, stretching for insight), pride (recognizing
others, multiplying milestones, practicing courage), and connection (creating
shared meaning, deepening ties, making moments matter) embedded in these
special moments. Extraordinary life
changing moments according to the authors have all of these elements. Businesses rarely incorporate all of
them. Religious rites will try to hit
them all. Think of your wedding, confirmation, or bar mitzvah. After all, didn’t it have a lot of these characteristics?
Although businesses may
not incorporate all of them, think of your own business activities. You can see
where celebrating onboarding training with a graduation cake, party, and a
congratulatory song can encourage the characteristics of pride (recognition,
milestones), and connection (shared meaning, making moments matter).
Breaking the customer
service script, (elevation) can come with a personal touch to the conversation,
and can offer a surprising lift to a customer’s day. Such as fawning over a
customer’s pet, while they are buying dog food, etc. The customer feels more than just a consumer
with a wallet. Although the authors do
warn about overdoing this one. Too much
syrup, and too many special moments dilute the specialness.
When work becomes one
party, and celebration after another, there are no special moments for the
employee. For an adult, a Spirit Dress-Up
Day for contact center employees that happens every day can just seem like you’ve
suddenly been transported back in time to your high school. Reliving your youth
is not necessarily, a good thing.
If a customer just wants his customer service
issue handled, and not a new best friend, he may resent the sugar, if his
problem was never resolved. If you loose
his dog food in the mail, and Fido is hungry, all the fawning over his pet, won’t
make the customer or his dog feel better, and would probably just aggravate
your customer.
Stretching for insight, an employee during career
development day after hearing many speeches about moving up the corporate
ladder can become encouraged and motivated to work harder. However, once he realizes that there’s no
more room on the ladder, he can also easily become disillusioned.
You can apply this
concept to your personal life as well.
Your 3 year old’s birthday party would be a big hit with baby elephants,
but just think if you celebrated his birthday every day of the year. Baby
elephants wouldn’t seem like such a big deal, would it?
In conclusion, this book
offers an insightful view of how to create highly memorable moments for
employees, and customers alike without going overboard. I recommend it for any establishment.
And P.S., it can also
help you plan one hell of a birthday party for your little tyke too!
ThePower of Moments - Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact,
Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, © 2017.
