Reflection - Storytelling

I once worked for a cellphone manufacturer as a Customer Experience Consultant where I was  responsible for driving sales and marketing related to the brand within an independent operator  store. There were many other cellphone brands been sold in the store as well. I would mainly  interact with customers and sales assistants in store in order to meet day to day deliverables for my  line manager.

Selection

The story telling method mainly focuses on conveying a message to all relevant stakeholders in order  to drive an all-inclusive objective. When highlighting the objective, the story teller must include  logic, emotional connection and larger purpose in the message. In this way, all stakeholders can  move with direction while challenges are addressed accordingly for to reach a value driven and  efficient environment. I found a clear reference to this method in the video by Francisco Garza on  Storytelling.

Challenge

The major challenge I faced was aligning my deliverables to the goals my company and of the  operator store. Store management and sales assistants were mainly concerned with driving sales  and post-sale service on all cell phone brands while my line manager and company were specifically  concerned with driving sales of our own brand and ensuring that our customers receive the best  service.

The goals and interests of the stakeholders seem fairly straightforward one would think?

However in practice it seemed quite the opposite. In a sales environment, sales assistants are  constantly driving toward reaching sales targets and things can get uncomfortable when anything  gets in the way of this. This was a challenge in that there are many moving parts behind satisfying  the customers needs besides just making the sale, and this was of particular interest to my line  manager and the operator store management. These needs include, post-sale service, device setup  or just general inquiry. With sales targets being the sales assistant’s major priority, the other  essential customer needs often are neglected. Communicating this lack of delivery can be quite a  contentious issue.

Application

The best way to address this matter was to firstly understand the consultants view on customer  satisfaction/service and what could be done to improve this. The same was done with the  independent operators store management and my manager. With all the information in mind, I then  related this to the overall goals of all stakeholders and how this affects these goals. It reminded me  of being a customer in a store and how customer service may affect my buying behaviour and how I  view certain brands base on the service provided. I then reflected on how the efforts of various  stakeholders are affected when customer service is neglected, and my conclusions were frightening.

Insights

Store managers are big drivers of customer satisfaction however they are not on the front line often  enough on drive this agenda so they intrust sales assistants to reciprocate their message. On the  other hand, cellphone manufacturers are concerned with how customers receive their brand in  terms of sales talk and service. Sales consultants are concerned with sales targets. This environment  is highly dependent on how sales assistants carry out service to clients. Even though customer

satisfaction is of high priority to all stakeholders involved, sales consultants are rather concerned  with their sales targets that are communicated on a daily basis.

It was important to take the sales assistants out of their own shoes to show how far reaching their  impact may be, however it is not always easy for them to relate to the customer. Thus, management  and cellphone manufacturers should take the story telling method into consideration when  communicating objectives or challenges that need to be addressed.

I personally achieved a lot of success while working with sales assistants. I am vocal and expressive  and in this way, I make sure to communicate goals with ultimate empathy. It is important to make  sure that your message is logical and clear cut when delivering it to your audience to avoid any  dilution of the main objective. I found that being in a store with the sales assistants for an entire day  dragged out the delivery of the message and often did not allow me to create the intended impact.  Therefore, in future, I will focus on the timing and length when delivering a message using the story  telling method.

