101 Ways to Improve Customer Service: Training, Tools, Tips, and Techniques

Chapter 12. Flex Your Mind: Mental Flexibility

Individual

Flexibility in mental responses means changing old patterns and ways of responding. When you break out of your old rut of routine stimulus-response, you can discover new talents, propensities, and ways of communicating. Opening your mind to more and varied possibilities will help you solve customer problems in unique ways. In order to improve mental flexibility, however, you need to practice.

Actions

• Interrupt old patterns by driving to work using a different route.

• Look at the world through a new set of eyeglasses—pretend you are 12 or 92 years old.

• Do something you have never done before: write a poem or learn to knit.

• Solve puzzles that involve lateral and critical thinking.

• In low-risk situations, stop what you are doing and think of three alternative ways to reach the proposed outcome.

• Switch from your primary sense of perception to another mode. For example, if you rely on visual cues, try tuning to sounds or feelings.

• Switch the sequences of information you use when making a decision.

• Make a list of all your habits for a week; then, on the following week, change the time of day you do each habitual activity or do some of them in different sequences.