Use of Fear in Delivering Excellent Service?
A few days ago, Kate Nasser published an interesting post called “Empathy in Customer Care – Lose Your Fear!“
In it, she discussed how people are more willing to help others who are afraid rather than those who are angry. I even added a comment to the effect that this is an evolutionary trait that helped us to survive in a pre-civilization world.
But, let’s look at it from another perspective. Can fear be used as a motivator, to help you go further or does it make you “freeze up”? As rational, thinking beings, we have the capacity to overcome fear rather than allow ourselves to go into “fight or flight” mode.
Fear as an Enabler
Some of us use our fears to motivate us, identify points to improve and limitations to overcome. In these cases, our fear can be an enabler and help us become better at what we do. John Maxwell has a great example of this in a recent blog post: “Don’t Shun the Sting!“
So do you use fear to help you improve or do you give in and flee (or worse fight)?
Customer Excellence and Fear
So can we use fear to improve customer service? Individually? Organizationally?
As individuals, we can always use our fear as a motivator to become better at what we do. But it has to come from within ourselves, personally.
I may be looking at this from only one side of the coin, but I really don’t see how fear can be used in a group setting. We cannot control the reactions of others and at least one person will react negatively. Unfortunately, in this case, emotions are “contagious” and the stronger the emotion, the more this is the case. Fear is a very strong emotion, you cannot control it’s spread.
Fear should not be used as a tool in any group setting. It is a purely personal tool to be used by those who are self-aware and ready to make the effort.
What do you think? Have you seen any positive use of fear in a group setting? Or does it always simply poison the work environment?
Cheers!
Eric
–
photo credit: Marco Bellucci
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Eric, I just came back from a customer visit where we found that the CSRs were being negatively motivated, meaning that there were incentives for them to provide a poorer service to callers. This was defended by the center as motivating their people to meet an average talk time within their teams. Their team leads turned this into a “whip” to drive them. The CSRs were afraid, as well as financially effected, by not meeting this target. The focus on the customer experience, or its excellence was obviously not there.
Sure, fear can get the adrenaline flowing but I agree that it has no place in the work place.
Hi Eric,
This is a very good point on a concept that we all witness much more than we realize.
Fear can only really be used as a motivating factor to get ourselves out of a dangerous situation – physical, financial, or emotional.
Fear cannot, and should not, ever be used in the workplace as a motivator. While we can internally use fear to prompt ourselves to produce work to the best of our capabilities so as not to lose a job, too often I see leaders use fear of job loss as a threat to “motivate” staff to work harder.
Conversely, by approaching the situation with encouragement and support, the outcomes are usually quite surprising. It’s amazing what fostering a productive environment can accomplish. Now, I’m not looking at this through rose-colored glasses. There certainly needs to be accountability and responsibility for each member of our staff. The point is how your approach can impact the outcome.
Fear will NEVER generate respect. You can’t demand respect, you must EARN it from your staff. If you are leading through fear, then you are limiting your team from producing their true potential.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Twitter Comment
RT @ericjacques: Should we use fear as a motivator? [link to post] // Interesting question.
– Posted using Chat Catcher