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Perception and Reality


I was fascinated to read this snipped in a financial news summary:
Vicorp’s UK Call Centre Operational Review has found that UK adults believe they wait for an average of 11 minutes to speak to a live agent, compared with the industry average of 30 seconds.

Thinking about it and recent calls that I have made to call centres brought home to me that I would probably have said 10 minutes when in reality there is often no wait (other than the keying in numbers on the automated filter) and other times a 10 minute or so wait.

As someone who read History at University and has worked in HR and employee relations for some time I am very conscious of the perception, reality and myth dynamic - thus my interest in finding it so clearly quantified in the above statement.

If you add to the fact that not only will people will mostly remember the poor experience (i.e. the times they waited but not the times they did not) but also they will tell more than 3 people about it, we can see the challenge in generating and maintaining positive myths and stories as opposed to the negative ones. Within companies this is exacerbated by the fact that the negative stories are 'just so much more interesting'.

There is a lesson here in terms of leadership as well. One leadership 'slip' will carry a lot more weight than several leadership 'successes'.

There are, of course, ways to mitigate this and one that I believe is particularly effective is to be candid. Admit when you make a mistake and apologise - it takes all the fun out of spreading the word and indeed you can get the person on side. Also as a leader seeking to adopt more consistently constructive leadership behaviour tell people that this is your goal - once again, this gets people on side and helps smooth out the glitches and keep the positive change having a positive impact. As a coach this is a good tip to share with your people since being open about the goal and the possibility of slips means that people will be looking for the improvement and celebrate this rather than spot and talk about the less constructive foibles that we are all prone to make.


Published by: Lisette on 20/06/2009 - Add a comment

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