Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone…the next 30 day challenge

A few days ago, I posted a quote on twitter: Silent gratitude isn’t much good to anyone” (Gladys Stern).

The Challenge

This got me thinking with regards to my next 30 day challenge. Wouldn’t it be great to form the habit of going out of my way to show my gratitude to people I wouldn’t ordinarily do that with? I am not just talking about my wife or team mates, but people that I am in brief contact with – the lady at the checkout, the guy on the phone etc.

People that I just normally give a passing thanks to. Wouldn’t it be great to form the habit of being really grateful to those guys? How would it impact these folks?

So for the last 5 days, I have been going out of my way to say thanks to these folks – it is my current 30 day challenge.

Happenings with O2

I’ve made an interesting discovery in the last few days: people and companies aren’t geared up for people saying thanks. But they are geared up for people who complain.

Take my recent dealings with O2 over my lost iPhone. On the whole their policy has not blessed me, at all. Normally in such situations – I would give the guys on the phone a hard time. This time I tried a different route. I looked for ways to be really grateful for the the help they gave me.

There was a girl called Sarah, a kind Scouser. The more I appreciated what she did – the more she did. It got to the stage where I thought it would be good to write into O2 and congratulate them on hiring someone so kind and helpful (even if limited by the company’s crazy policy). When I told Sarah that I would like to do this and asked her who I should write to – she didn’t know.

The same with the next two people that I spoke to at O2: the more I thanked them, the more helpful they became. When I asked who I could write to – no one knew.

The best advice they could give me was to given them a good score when I get the text message asking me to rate their service.

Amazing isn’t it? People just aren’t used to receiving positive remarks about their service. Perhaps this is peculiar to the UK?

Bizarrely, when i told one guy that I wanted to write in – he gave me the complaints department details. His assumption was that I wanted to complain despite being grateful with him on the phone. I guess those guys in the call centres are used to getting complaints everyday!

So, as a business – we have a complaints procedure. What about a gratitude procedure?

Takeaways

• I wonder if i should set up a system that illicits gratitude from people about my staff? Could be an interesting experiment? (This is probably more of a takeaway for me).
• Being quite vocal about your gratitude with someone really influences them.
• You have to be both sincere and specific about your praise with people. When you thank people, reference a specific thing that they have done for you. So, don’t just say “thanks for the help” but rather “I really appreciate the fact that you went and checked that for me, thanks.” It is much more effective when you are specific.

It will be an interesting month, and i look forward to seeing what happens over the next few weeks!