The art of better conversations
How a simple change can open up a new world of customer engagement.
Allow me to briefly set the scene...
I’m a dog owner. I have two gorgeous (yet slightly scatty dogs - a Show Cocker and a Malshi). Every morning I take them for a walk around the neighboured (we’re fortunate to have some great walks on our doorstep).
Now us dog owners are a friendly bunch, and we love to say hello to everyone that passes (I’m no exception). A smile, a chipper greeting of “morning” and a slight head nod are my staple.
Indeed, some days I’ll even extend my repertoire to a “good morning”, just to spice things up a little!
It’s this I want to discuss, the simple insertion of the word “good” in my daily greeting.
You see I began to observer that I got a warmer response when I used the word “good” … it got me to thinking and an idea was born. I decided to run a two-week experiment to see just how powerful the word “good” was in my daily greeting.
Week 1 I restricted my daily greeting ritual to a chipper “morning”, along with the smile and nod. Week 2 I simply added the word “good” to the greeting.
The results in week 2 were staggering!
Compared to week 1 (70% response rate, 1 brief and no in-depth conversations) … who knew the word “good” could be so powerful!
I wonder what would happen if I extended my experiment for a further two weeks? Followed up “good morning” with a closed question in week 3 and an open question in week 4.
领英推荐
I bet the results would be equally staggering… though my wife might end up sending out a search party to find me, given all those in-depth conversations I reckon I’d be having!
So, the message is simple - if you want to have more, better quality conversations with your customers then find your “good”.
Run your own "dog walk" experiments. Start simple and go where the results lead you. Test, test and then test some more.
Get involved in the conversation
I’d love to hear about your own experience with simple tests that lead to great things. Please comment and share your highs (and lows, they’re important too) of tests you’ve run to improve customer engagement. Let’s all learn from each other's experiences.
?
For the detail divers amongst you...
I fully acknowledge this is a BIG oversimplification of a split test experiment. Weather conditions, my tone of (spoken) voice and a whole host of other factors should be considered, if you were running a serious experiment.?But that’s not the intention of this post. I simply wanted to use an everyday example to illustrate the positive impact of testing.
O and in case you were wondering, for the purposes of this experiment I excluded my regulars from the results (the people I see daily). I wanted this to be purely about the net new.