Sunday, April 15, 2012

Fear of Failure Removes Opportunity for Giving Extraordinary Customer Service

There's an acronym that might familiar to you if you've worked in the "corporate" world... CYA. Cover Your Ass. In other words, don't make mistakes. Do not fail. Sadly, this is the culture of so many organizations... countries even.  In Finland, they're extremely risk averse - the biggest reason for not being entrepreneurial is the fear of failure. This is the reason why young entrepreneurs of Finland, lead by Aalto Entrepreneurship Society and Boardman Tulenkantajat group, actually arranged a 'National Failure Day' in order to change Finnish culture to be more embracing to failure.

In America, we could argue we are better off, and yet we still have a way to go. Failure is still something that most people do everything in their power to avoid.  But in recognizing and addressing those failures is where companies and organizations often have the best opportunities to turn negative customer service situations into extraordinary service experiences. But two things must happen first.

1) Companies to need to be listening to their customers as much as they share information with them.
And then...
2) They need to stop avoiding and/or fearing moments when they have failed. Failures happen, but what you do afterward can turn that from a failure into a success story.

 I'll be discussing this Monday, April 16th on Breakthrough Business Strategies Radio with host, Michele Price. Join us!

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