Killing the Myth of Soft Skills [Video]
This week we look at a talk I originally gave at ElevateCX in the spring of 2019. I had the chance to present it again at FullStory last week and recorded a version for this newsletter. I hope you enjoy. Hit reply to continue the conversation.
You may remember from Aphorisms 1, one of my favorites: “It’s not my job to convince you that you’re being unreasonable.” I had said:
It’s not uncommon for us to start feeling emotional and frustrated in these situations as well. We might think the best way to reply would be to address the perceived irrationality head on, e.g. “Hey look, if you’d just slow down and read what I wrote, you’d realize the answer to your question was in my last email.” The problem with this approach is that this can often lead to a stalemate. The customer isn’t trying to be irrational. They just happen to be having a frustrating experience and they’re expressing that in an indirect way. It’s best to realize that it’s literally not your job to try to convince them of their irrationality. So what is your job?
If these kinds of aphorisms—and the stories where they appear—are of interest to you, I think you’re really going to like a talk I recorded called “Killing the Myth of Soft Skills”. In this talk, I walk through several challenging customer interactions, exploring different “tools” that we can use to improve our written communicating when faced with tough conversations. Here’s a preview of the tools from the talk:
Project your brand with a rubric
“It’s not my job to convince you that you’re being unreasonable”
Ask for permission
Anger 👉 passion
“I am (not) awesome”
Without further ado, here’s the video:
In case the video doesn’t appear above, here’s a direct link to the video.
Etc.
I finished the Hamilton biography. What to take away from such an epic life? It’s hard to think about Alexander Hamilton and not dwell on the tragedy of the way his life ended. Had he not entered into a duel to uphold his personal reputation, Eliza would have not become a widow and their children would not have been without a father. Hamilton was a righteous man, but in many ways relied too heavily on his own convictions. It reminds me that our own sense of moral righteousness is necessarily fallible. The better angels of our nature will from time to time go silent. How shall we be reminded of our own fallibility? Next up, a biography on Frederick Douglas.
Things I’ve read:
Speaking of ElevateCX (where I originally gave the “Killing the Myth of Soft Skills” talk), they’re launching a brand new ElevateCX Community beginning September 4. If you work in customer support, I highly recommend checking this out.
From the FullStory blog, an exploration of digital experience maturity. I love maturity models. If you’re new to a particular field or product space, a maturity model can give you a lay of the land and directional steps you may want to take if you’re looking to improve where you stand. If you’re in the customer experience space and want to wrap your arms around how to go deep on digital experience, this is worth a read. The blog just scratches the surface and you can request the full report here.