During my Master’s studies we did a case study on two banks. Bank A scored 9 out of 10 on its customer satisfaction index – a near perfect score. Bank B only achieved 6 out of 10. The problem was that Bank B still had better market share and customers indicated a continuing preference for the lower-rated organisation. When asked why, they simply stated, “They know my name”.
That most human of gestures is ably captured in an African greeting, which simply translates as “I see you”.
We live in such a depersonalized world and wonder why we still battle to sustain market shares and profitability or success in our lives. Even churches have reduced people to numbers – and still wonder why they battle to keep what they have.
Social networks involve a numbers game that will depersonalize us further, to rob the next generation of the power of personal engagement. Its just not good enough though. People are people and until we get that we won’t keep them and if we fail to do that we will have failed in the essence of Godly stewardship, which is “to feed His lambs”.
The emergence of mass production systems has led to canned approaches to service, driven by cold, heartless machines. You don’t agree – well stop paying or buying and see how quickly they turn you off, then you will know how much you matter.
What sparked this debate was a gesture by a Facebook friend, Sherry Cecil, who changed the abstract comment on one of my blog posts, from “I appreciate that” to a personal and warm, “I appreciate you”. One word was changed to make a world of difference.
I was further motivated by my previous post on "titles", a practice that is also preserving relational distance. We see similar tendencies amongst firms that advertise themselves as the leaders in this or that, which says nothing about the needs of their markets or the individuals whose needs define their markets.
If Jesus was amongst us today and He had to start again, against the prevailing trend of mega-churches and systematized Christianity, He would not only succeed in building a new congregation more steadily, He would also keep His sheep – because He saw people as individuals, not crowds or numbers or statistics. He knows us by name.
I am striving for a shorter blog post so I am not going any further now, but I will pursue this subject further in subsequent posts.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net
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