One of the biggest components of building relationships is the ability to see the human side of an enterprise; both internally and externally. Tone, inflection, behavior – it all varies person to person when communicating via email, text, phone or even in face to face meetings.
Ask yourself… have you ever passed judgment on one of your colleagues before you actually got to know them? [I’m raising my hand now]. I’m guilty as charged. Now ask yourself… have you ever formed a relationship or had the opportunity to get to know them beyond the surface, and later realized that you may have misjudged that person? [Raising my other hand now. I can’t type w/ no hands so I’m putting them both down now].
It should be an underlying strategy of every organization to focus on harmonizing integrated knowledge and relationships to realize true business benefits and ultimately monetizing them.
Relationships are fundamentally built on trust. Build and grow trust within your associates to the point that they feel engaged and have a sense of security and ultimately, they’ll pass that emotion on to the customer, client or fellow associate. With the rise and fall of companies like AIG, Lehman Brothers, GM and Citibank, consumers are quickly losing TRUST in large companies. This is precisely why more organizations must focus on building trust within their associates… because you and I, as consumers, trust people – not companies (we’ve all played the automated message game, only to be passed onto another automated menu, right?). People do business with other people, not brands. The associates whom represent that organization help determine and shape the way that brand is received.
How many companies leave a vendor because of their lack of trust? Companies and consumers are looking for people they can trust, not just another big name, Fortune Company or highly capitalized entity. In an economy lingering with ambiguity, it’s integral that more organizations focus on building relationships and trust with their associates and their consumers/clients to be successful.
Relationships lead to humanizing the enterprise, which leads to happier associates, which leads to higher productivity, which leads to more efficient business practices, which leads to more engaged associates, which leads to perfect service, which leads to solving world hunger. Moral of this story… build the relationships and trust and the world’s problems will be a worry of yesterday.
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