As the head of the Brand Services team at Olberding Brand Family and having worked in client service for over 25 years, I have pretty high expectations of how clients should be treated.
I recently changed internet service providers, and the awful experience of cancelling my previous service was so frustrating that I’ve been obsessing about it for over a week. When I called the company, I fully expected the representative to try to get me to stay and was prepared to politely decline any offers of a better plan. I was not prepared to have the extremely frustrating feeling of not being heard.
As the head of the Brand Services team at Olberding Brand Family and having worked in client service for over 25 years, I have pretty high expectations of how clients should be treated. Having answered a customer service line for a Fortune 500 company right out of college, I knew the person I was talking to would be listening for key words that would help him pull up the right script to guide him on how to respond to me.
The problem was, while he was listening, he wasn’t HEARING me.
Hearing is one of the best skills Olberding’s Brand Leaders demonstrate. They have the incredible ability to translate what our client partner is requesting into actionable objectives for the creative team. Often, that requires digging deeper, asking a lot of questions, and paying attention to what is not being verbalized but is absolutely being communicated. They can “read the room,” as the saying goes.
Do they sense tension from tight deadlines? Frustration from a lack of understanding of the design process? The desire for the client to make a great impression with their leadership via this work?
Hearing and understanding everything being communicated not only results in better deliverables, but it’s also one of the ways we live up to our promise of caring for people and the brands they bring to life. It’s part of our culture and woven throughout our interactions with all our colleagues we connect with in pre-press, color, metal deco, design, and digital.
If you want to experience what it feels like to be truly HEARD by your design partners, shoot me a message. I’m HEAR to listen (spelling intended).