Storytelling tips you can try: Customer service is also about the invisible people
As Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track.
He was unable to retrieve it as the train started rolling. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first shoe.
Asked by a fellow passenger why he did that, Gandhi replied, ‘the poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair he can use.’
How to use this in business
Gandhi had a great ability to see beyond his own problems to the way he could help others. Just say you’re going to give a speech or presentation about customer service. You might want your audience to become more mindful about how your service affects the people you can’t see.
You could start it off like this – “It’s important that we’re mindful of how our customer service affects not only those in front of us, but also those we haven’t thought of. You know, Gandhi was a great example of this. One day, he was boarding a train…” and the story begins there.
Tags for your storybank: #Gandhi #LostShoe #Train #InvisiblePeople #ThinkingAhead #CustomerService
Source: Ketcham, K & Kurtz E 2014, Experiencing Spirituality: Finding Meaning Through Storytelling, Penguin Group.
A storybank is where you store all of your stories. This could be a physical notebook, but we find that using a system like Evernote to be a more popular approach. You can even use Evernote to create tags, making it easier to find stories when you need them. We have a collection of stories categorised and all in one place, ready for you to find the perfect stories you need to get your business points across.
To be an effective business storyteller requires practice. Learn more about our training programs here.
About Shelley Fenech
Shelley is a recent Strategic Communication graduate and assists with all things communication. She helps to progress our purpose to help restore humanity to organisations by telling our story through marketing and social media. She also supports our global Partner network in their quest to bring storytelling into business.