How to show that you care

A short story to illustrate how you can show the people that you serve that you care about them and their problems

I took this many years ago in Boston. There was something about the one balloon all on its own that made me think about the one person reaching out with care at a difficult time and how that can brighten the day.

I had coffee with a colleague^¹ a few months ago and he made the point that so often, what people want is for someone to take the time to care about them and their problems. He’s right. He’s also right that care is often better communicated personally rather than at scale. Read on for a brief example.

We all have experiences with businesses that stick with us. Something happens that boosts our loyalty or repels us from the company.

Given where businesses invest their dollars, you’d assume that these experiences would come from meticulously optimized and automated marketing campaigns or gloriously orchestrated conferences.

I’m willing to bet that while you appreciate these things, they aren’t the experiences that stick with you. These touchpoints are expected, and we know that machines make them happen.

In many cases, the experiences that stick aren’t expected at all and have two things in common: people and care.

I’ll give you an example: My internet disappeared the other week. Faster than opening the next email, everything in my apartment stopped and all I had left was a WAN error.

While I set up my phone as a (albeit spotty) hotspot, I called NetBlazer to find out what was wrong. The woman who answered took the time not only to apologize but empathize² with my plight. She kindly explained that there was an outage in my building, likely related to the hardware on site. They were sending someone PDQ to determine the problem so I could get back online.

I thanked her for the information, returned to my work, and figured I’d check every once in a while to see if the internet had come back (read: me refreshing my desktop browser window every 30 minutes while working on my laptop, which is still connected to the hotspot).

Then about an hour later, my phone rang. Google identified the caller as NetBlazer. Surprised, I answered the phone. It was the same woman who had talked to me earlier. Still obviously confused, I asked her why she was calling.

She responded as if she was doing something perfectly normal. “I was calling back to make sure your internet was working for you. Our systems say your building is back online, but I wanted to check to make sure you had everything you needed. I know this really interrupted your day.”

Wow.

I was so grateful that she’d thought to check on me. I refreshed my browser while she was still on the line (all systems were a go!) and thanked her profusely for taking the time to confirm all was well. She told me to have a wonderful day.

I will disclose that I went from being satisfied with my internet provider to quite loyal to this particular company. Why? They did something that made me feel like the humans on their end cared about me and my problems (I find being taken offline while working on a project with a deadline quite distressing if that wasn’t apparent already…)

Take this example and apply it to your business. Where can you show the people you serve that you care?

It doesn’t have to be a phone call, but whatever you choose to do will likely require you to slow down. You will need to listen, you will need to take a genuine interest, and you may even need to share a little of yourself. You will absolutely need to meet the person where they are rather than try to fit them into your box.³

Because that’s the point — to show that you care about them and the problem they’re experiencing, you have to focus on them rather than yourself.

And that always comes best from a human. 

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1. Shoutout to Raman Shah.

2. And not in a perfunctory way. She went off script related to me as a person.

3. Don’t forget that no amount of caring will make up for not solving the problem.