Fish vs Family: A five-minute training you can share with your team

Perhaps you’ve seen this trend that is making the rounds on social media lately. It involves teenagers (often daughters) posting a video contrasting the difference between how their dads look in photos with them versus how they look in photos with a fish they caught. Almost universally, the results go something like this: Here’s my dad beaming with a huge toothy smile while holding this fish. Now, here’s my dad barely mustering a grin while standing next to me before the homecoming dance. What makes these videos funny instead of sad is that we all know these kids are very likely adored by their dads, and they are certainly more loved than a largemouth bass. It just didn’t exactly come across that way in the photographic evidence. Maybe it would have if dad knew it would one day be trending on Tik Tok?

When it comes to those of us in service and hospitality businesses, most of us love what we do. We love our customers. We love to make them happy and we love sharing in their joy, excitement, and memories. But, it’s not enough for us to simply know WE love all of those things. We must make sure our customers know we love them. We must give them lasting “photographic” evidence of that love in every interaction throughout our customer experience chain. We do that by making sure our faces show excitement when we greet them—with a huge toothy six-pound bass smile. Our voices must carry that tell-tale tone of happiness throughout the conversation. We've all heard it said that we should treat our customers like family, but maybe we should treat them like the biggest fish we’ve ever caught instead.

Why? Because our customers are filing away "photographic" evidence and forming opinions about our businesses with every single interaction with our employees. Perhaps you have someone on your team right now who loves their job and is good at it, but just doesn’t seem to get the stellar feedback from your customers you know they are capable of. Believe it or not, that’s costing your business money. Take a moment and find one of these videos (like this one) on social media and share a laugh with your team. Then, ask them to help you make sure every customer has “photographic” evidence of how much they are appreciated with every interaction. You’ll see more positive reviews and more repeat business as a result.

Have fun!

Ted

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