3 Lessons Salsa Dancing has Taught Me About Customer Service
As I was dancing Salsa this weekend in Los Angeles, my mind was racing as to how many parallels there are to dancing Salsa and the customer service aspect of my job. I am a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer which requires me to troubleshoot, educate and guide our customers through the recommended practices of some of our O365 products so that they can be as productive as possible.
I never thought my knowledge of Salsa dancing would ever relate, but it does.
Lesson 1: Learn how to dance
You cannot wing this complex dance, you have to know what you’re doing for an enjoyable experience. If you try to wing it, you’ll end up stepping on your partner’s toes or turning her the wrong way, and most likely, that will be the last time you two dance together. You have to know the technology you are explaining, and know it well. I took six weeks of Salsa dancing classes when I was starting out, just as I’ve taken countless courses on the technology I support. Customers will appreciate and most likely ‘ask for another dance’ when you help them with the knowledge you have learned.
Lesson 2: Accept change
People have different styles of Salsa dancing based on the region of the globe they come from. You cannot expect a “one size fits all” mentality because just as you think you’ve learned all the moves to get you through, your new partner introduces you to a few more. That is the nature of the tech industry, it is evolving so quickly, what you knew about a certain product last week, may have changed this week. Therefore, you need to have what I call a ‘malleable thought process’ in which you ACCEPT that you may not know how to solve this riddle at the moment, reflect on your existing knowledge and try something new.
Lesson 3: Have fun
How many times have you attended a course of some sort or maybe just had someone teach you something new and you get the sense that they REALLY enjoy what they just taught you? Passion makes a great teacher. Whether it be Salsa dancing, Tango, hiking, whatever your passion may be, find it and immerse yourself in it. You’ll see that when you face obstacle with it, overcoming them is so much easier than something you do not enjoy. In the tech world, my job today, differs greatly than it did just a year ago, I found a technology I am passionate about and I actually have fun learning and sharing my knowledge. It will reflect onto your customers in a positive way.
Just as the great Salsa singer Hector Lavoe said many years ago in his classic song El Cantante (this means The Singer): “Yo soy, el cantante que hoy han venido a escuchar” (this means “I am the singer you’ve come to hear today”). Be a good “singer” to your customer (audience), so they can learn from you.
