Display of Sincerity

Three Incidents impacted me last week. I am writing about 2 of them today, and the third one I shall write later.

I was travelling most of last week meeting customers, trying to push sales, create new openings and explore customers / segments which will offer business opportunity. One of these calls was a formal presentation to an Architectural house - a very important call. We had a fairly large team from our side to take care of various product verticals. Among our group was one individual with an unshaven chin and wearing sports shoes to work. He is a promising young fellow in our team, and has come in with very good references. He has a good record of customer service and is generally liked by customers. But his attire sure did upset me a little.

Pix by hyougushi

The Other incident was at Bangalore airport. All flights are running empty these days and passengers are few. As I approached the counter of the airline I was flying, I saw that the 3 check-in clerks at the counter were involved in a friendly banter and I my walking in on thier banter perhaps served as a slight intrusion. On my right was another set of counters belonging to another airline. This airline too had no passengers at the moment, but all counters were manned, and each person appeared either busy working, with a couple of them always eagerly awaiting customers so that they could greet them with a warm smile and smoothly process their check-in.

Mind you, my own check-in was extremely smooth and the staff was polite and nice to me. But I found a subtle difference in the approach. While the other airline appeared sincere and friendly, the staff on the airline I was flying was only friendly. While it is great to have fun at the work place, I thought it was equally important to convey a message of being sincere in approach. The second airline seemed very sincere and determined to ensure that any customer walking in would be treated like Royalty and made to feel extremely welcome. They ensured that a lack of work was not visible to the customers.

I have been thinking about these two incidents over the weekend. If I was a customer, I would carry an image of "casual" about the employees and effectively, the company.

While being casual may have been ignored in the frenzy of work going on during the boom times, during a slow-down, this is simply a no-no. Customers will give business to those individuals and companies they like. And first and foremost, they will like sincerity.

Sincerity has to be VISIBLE now. In every action, in every e-mail, in every telephone call and in every aspect of your persona.

In our next post, we will explore sincerity further. In the meanwhile, tell me your views on sincerity. Share few stories where sincerity impacted you. This sharing will be of great learning value to other readers.

Let us together spread Hope and Faith and conquer fear and dispair. Sphere: Related Content