GAME #34: Point of View
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Game Categories:
Opener Energizer Communication
Team-building Review Topical: Customer Service
❖ Purpose: To sensitize customer service trainees to customer needs.
❖ Time Required: 20 minutes.
❖ Size of Group: 8 to 12.
❖ Materials Required: A “registration” form, prepared in advance.
❖ The Exercise in Action: Susan Glasstetter of Indiana Hospital uses this “registration” exercise to motivate their customer service employees to be more empathetic and to walk for a few minutes in the customer’s shoes. Glasstetter developed a one-page form that participants are required to complete to officially register for a customer service training program. The questions are related to education and personnel policies and are slanted so that only recent high school or college graduates, education specialists, or human resource personnel could possibly provide immediate, accurate answers. Glasstetter’s role is to register each applicant in as detached, professional, and vaguely impatient a manner as possible. She reports reactions to this little exercise as very enlightening. “It is difficult to maintain my role while listening to comments such as, ‘I don’t remember what my high school Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores were! Why do you need that?’ and ‘What do you mean by employee number? I didn’t even know I had a number!’” After the forms are completed and the group is seated, Glasstetter asks participants to comment on the registration process. In general, they don’t like it. Before they begin complaining again, she asks if their experience helped them see how customers might be confused about company policies that the participants find commonplace. For a minute there is silence. As the light dawns, heads begin to nod in agreement and some complaints continue about the exercise “not being fair.” The empathy-raising exercise has obvious benefits: Employees can truly experience the viewpoint of their customers. It can also have one serious drawback, depending on your group: Those who are neither ready nor willing to admit they need a change of attitude might resent having their eyes opened.
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