Remember The 8 to 1 Rule If You Want To Keep Eating

I was having a meeting with my new boss yesterday. She asked me why it was so hard to get the employees to trust her. She views herself as a genuine person who truly cares about other people and as far as I can tell she is. She seems very kind.

I told her she would need to be extremely patient and persistent because the old manager did not understand the 8 to 1 rule and had created an environment of mistrust.

“What is the 8 to 1 rule?” she asked. Studies are quite clear on the fact that in the customer service arena, it takes a minimum of eight positive experiences to wipe out one negative experience. What this means is that every time you do or say something a customer DOESN’T like, you absolutely must figure out how to do or say something the customer DOES like a minimum of eight times just to break even on the trust scale.

I told her that effective managers view their employees as their customers and that every time she had to share negative news, she needed to find positive news to share if she wanted people to “not shoot the messenger”!

My company is big on reports and metrics and upper management is not very understanding when “an area of focus” (and there are lots of areas of focus) “is under the expectation benchmark”. They often seem to forget to mention the positives. Sound familiar? I told her that she should make the decision that she would exploit the positives and only push the negatives when she had enough “positive emotional capital” built up to offset the “bad news”. Otherwise I said, “To those of us in the field it seems as though you are picking a fight and you will receive zero buy in.” With zero buy in, you will receive similar results. Employees are tired of being bullied and have learned to tune out what they perceive as constant complaining!

Keeping in mind that my definition of a customer is “anyone to whom you could potentially add value” (family, friends, bosses, coworkers, employees, shoppers, and yes even the people who serve you) what are you doing to make “doing business with you” an overall positive experience? Are you remembering to use the 8 to 1 rule to build up emotional capital? If not, why not? Take responsibility for the results you obtain and make a decision today to treat your customers to the experience they are looking for. If you do, not only will your emotional bank accounts reflect that, your checkbook will as well!

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Bio:
Corey Jahnke is the author of “We Are Not Here On Rehearsal” and the creator of SuccessEqualsValue.com. Corey is a John C. Maxwell certified success coach AND a Bob Burg certified Go-Giver Coach. Corey’s company, Legend Crafters, helps people go from stuck to unstuck, from unstuck to remarkable and from remarkable to legendary. Will YOU become a legend?

Links:
www.coreyjahnke.com
www.SuccessEqualsValue.com
www.facebook.com/cwjahnke