As a business owner, you must see what your customers are seeing

When police interview witnesses to a crime, they frequently get conflicting accounts.

I could speculate and give a million reasons why this might be, but instead, I will just say that people see things differently and that is part of being human. Our viewpoints are clouded – or filtered – by our experiences, so the way we see things is about much more than the events themselves.

For example, someone who has been the victim of a violent crime is going to see things differently than a person who has never had that awful experience.

As British biologist Thomas Huxley said, “There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.”

Then there is Irish author Oscar Wilde, who said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

When you are serving customers, you must see things the way they do.

We recently were in a physician’s office for a 1:20 p.m. appointment. We waited an hour before being moved to a second waiting room, where we waited another hour and a half before finally seeing the doctor. While in the second waiting room, we heard so many complaints. Patients were becoming angry – furious, really – with the long wait times.

I finally got to ask the doctor about the long waits. He never apologized, nor did he show any empathy for the 20 people still waiting at 4 p.m. to see him. He just said that three of his staff members were out, which made no sense as everyone already had been seen by his staff. They were waiting to see him.

Then, when I asked why they did not scatter appointments throughout the afternoon rather than having people come in all at once, he just stared at me without any reaction.

I considered asking the doctor if he had ever walked into the waiting room to observe what his patients were experiencing, but I knew the answer without needing to ask. If he had seen what people were going through in his office, there is no doubt he would have changed the system.

Though this example comes from a medical practice, many businesses fall into the same trap. Top management simply does not understand what their customers are going through. If top management put themselves in their customers’ shoes, many things likely would be different.

Now go out and take a critical look at every customer interaction. Ask yourself how a customer would feel about each one and what might need to change to make it a better experience.

This story was originally published February 23, 2017 at 12:53 PM with the headline "As a business owner, you must see what your customers are seeing."