Loyalty Leader Quick Tips

He was absolutely right. Reggie’s humor had permeated the entire store. Other customers who were complete strangers were joking and chatting with one another. It was actually fun to be there. In fact, we were laughing so much that we lost track of time and nearly forgot to pick up our son from his soccer practice.Reggie called the next day to make sure that our new cellular service was working properly. When he identified himself, I felt like I was chatting with an old friend. We laughed some more about his reaction to our ancient calling plan. Reggie’s warmth and terrific sense of humor was an unexpected surprise. We no longer felt ripped off about the money we had wasted on our old plan. Instead we focused on the great savings we were now going to experience.Where has workplace humor gone? It has been said that a child laughs 300 times each day and an adult is lucky if he laughs 15 times. Very few of those laughs occur at work.There are a lot of factors that have taken away our laughter on the job.

• Constant change. It’s likely you will have three to five careers and ten job changes in your lifetime–some are involuntary.
• Keeping up with technical innovation contributes to increased job stress.
• Concerns about being politically correct. (Humor does not need to be offensive).
• High volumes of phone calls and increased workloads.

It is perfectly all right to have fun at work!Look for humor in everyday situations. Find reasons to laugh. The ability to laugh at yourself can reduce tension in embarrassing situations. Lighten up! You can’t change others but you can change the way you choose to respond to people and situations.  Contrary to popular belief, most customers have a terrific sense of humor and they find it refreshing when they discover a light-hearted employee.My husband and I visited a local Verizon Wireless store recently. We have two cell phones and an outdated service plan that was costing us a bundle. Our fears that we had been paying way too much for cellular service were confirmed when we met Reggie.Reggie looked up our current plan on the computer and his first reaction was shock. He said, “This plan is really old.” I asked him how bad it was and he replied, “It’s a great plan–as long as you don’t use your phone!” Reggie’s comment was so unexpected that it took a moment to sink in. When it did, my husband nearly fell over with laughter. Then Reggie looked up our latest bill on his computer and said, “Ooh…ouch!” Once again we all started laughing.We were disappointed when the manager came over to finish setting up our new calling plan. He was quite formal and serious as he tried to sell us accessories. I suggested to him that he ought to lighten up a bit and have fun with his customers like Reggie because he would probably increase his sales. He replied, “Yea, I know I could be more cheerful at work. Reggie’s terrific–our customers all seem to love him.”