I thought it was going to be a day like any other until I stepped outside the front door and saw this…
I know what you are thinking – I should have been expecting this on April 1st.
Except that it WASN’T April 1st, it was April 3rd. My kids had decided to extend the hilarity for an as-yet undisclosed period of time.
As my seven year old daughter put it, “Pranks are fun every day.”
Why is there is only one day a year dedicated to joy, good-natured pranks, and general goofiness? That’s not a world that I want to live in. At least, that’s what I tell myself as I discover plastic bugs in my sock drawer, snakes in the shower, and fake poop in my shoes. Again.
Why is it that we tend to restrict the good things of life to small constrained periods? Should you have fun only on April Fool’s Day (and maybe even New Year’s Eve) but be a dour curmudgeon the rest of the year?
We do this with customer experience as well.
Often organizations will launch special research programs to understand their customers. They will do a Customer Journey Mapping Workshop series, launch a big survey, run a series of intense focus groups, or initiate a special “service excellence month”. That’s all good stuff – but what are they doing the rest of the year? If the results of these projects aren’t baked into the day-to-day operation and culture of your organization, it ultimately has no effect on how your customers are experiencing you.
I am all for special research projects, but if they are not grounded in a daily practice of listening and being attuned to your customers, you might as well save your money and ignore them year-round.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make sure my sugar hasn’t been swapped for salt yet again.
Photo credit: Jana Sedivy
