Today’s post comes courtesy of Ed Jackson, MindLeaders customer service manager.

Over the holiday period I was in Austria learning how not to fall over every two minutes. One day I was in a cab with a delightfully friendly driver. Her English was impeccable, a lot better than my German. It was a relatively long trip of about 40 minutes. So, after the usual “cab in a different country” conversation (very different to “cab in your own country” conversations) which included the revelation that Ireland was not in the UK (“You don’t have the queen?”) there was a lull in the conversation.

The music on the radio wasn’t my cup to tea, to say the least, and after four or five songs the driver said “Nickleback, every single song is good… every song!”

“Yeeeeaaah” I replied faux-enthusiastically.

“Are there many good Ireland bands?”

“Yeah, of course, we have lots of good bands” I replied, seizing my chance to impress, “like U2 or Van Morrison or The Cranberries or The Frames for example?.. .No response…”or Thin Lizzy?”… again, no response. I listed as many bands as I could think of and the only response I got was when I mentioned “Westlife”… “oh, Westlife”.

Then out of nowhere came the driver’s Eureka moment: “Johnny Logan, He is Irish, yes?” This threw me quite a bit. “He is the man that Austrian mothers want their daughters to come home with…”

As I digested that particular piece of information, wondering how Johnny Logan* was more famous in Austria than U2, I started to think about the importance of knowing your audience. I had been thinking purely from my own point of view and my own expectations, i.e what would I expect to hear if I asked that question.

Yet when delivering a service we deal with different people of all ages, from different countries with different backgrounds and levels of experience. That means that part of what we need to do is adapt our language, our tone and the level of detail we use to suit the person on the other end.

In all of the courses and programmes MindLeaders deliver, we use subject matter experts to make sure that they are fit for the audience they are meant for. Every day of the week our courseware and our testing are taken by a hugely diverse number of people all over the world.

Each week our learning support managers and customer service representatives talk to and email hundreds of learners, managers, teachers, administrators etc. and in every one of those interactions a huge amount of work has gone into understanding and adapting to the audience and with consistent feedback those interactions get better each time.

If you don’t adapt and learn if you look at each interaction from your own perspective, from the way you would like to receive the information then you are on to a loser. So who knows, the next time anyone asks me about Irish music, my first response might just be “Johnny Logan!”

*Johnny Logan is the most successful artist in Eurovision history (and Irish)