"Nice" doesn't just happen - so how do you keep it that way?

Recently I had the pleasure of supporting the Sparks loyalty programme where the customer experience came first...and it took me back to my PhD work on experience being more than transactional, service recovery (what happens when things go wrong) as a key factor to loyalty, and how the customer doesn't want to be "king", but they do want what they want!!...and it made me smile because in a world where I'm usually invited to talk about burnout - this was a little #glimmer (a "spark" if you will) of joy.

But it made me think - I wonder if people get the link between customer experience and burnout...

It's simple...for every positive experience any place, any time...someone or something has made it that way! ...And if that someone or something remains unrecognised, unloved, unappreciated...it's going to burn out (or run out!)

"Nice" doesn't just happen - people or processes make it happen!

A plesant environment has been created by a person, or an organisation, or in the best cases a system which celebrates the beauty of the organisation and the person...but the glaring hole I found in my research is all too often an individual creates the positive, the organisation sees it but doesn't quite understand it - tries to monetise or demand it...when actually all that is needed is a bit of appreciation and support!

Take this onto an individual level - who wouldn't feel put out when you've put time and effort into something or someone only to get a cursory "cool" (if that!) as if the whole experience was easy.

So with little thanks for the effort...why bother...nice runs out.

"Nice" costs

It may not (although sometimes does) cost financially - for someone to be generous to you they have chosen not to be generous to themselves (and that works at every leveal of financial wealth); it costs emotionally - for someone to spend time and effort on you, that is time and effort not spent on themselves; it costs physically as often something in the environment needs to change. But the outcome is beautiful - and yes, often the person or people who do it love giving... This is NOT the article to go into people pleasing or over-giving but yes, they are contributing factors to burnout, but at the surface of this, a simple acknowledgement should be a given, and gratitude and reciprocity part of maintainence.

I can put this into the work context when it comes to "invisible work"...this is often the bane of the IT world...they have come to fix a problem and while there someone else says "could you just"...often in organisations there's a system of logging, but if they're a mate and they are right there...who wouldn't (and the team member themselves feels the emotional pull of exactly the same reasons!)...but the consequence - the work is done but not logged, you function well (and faster than putting in a request in the first place), but they don't know where their time has gone and neither does the mechanism for logging KPIs!

...So they work harder...and nice burns out.

"Nice" is often percevied as the mountain top - not the climb!

This is an even more nuanced one...when someone works hard and then brings others into their orbit, it is easy to take that space for granted..."Oh this Business Class flight is nice" - rather than thinking - whose work got me here (and if it's your own - have at it, you earned it!!!) However, even for the most priviledged, opportunities don't always translate into outcomes, unless you work at them...and the danger of seeing "nice at the top" as an entitlement is not just burnout or "running out" of the person who brought you there, but losing the advantage you had in being there.

If we mistake gaining access for entitlement and we ourselves don't do the work to stay there or keep it nice...and if the burden of maintaining "nice" becomes unsustainable for the one who carried it in the first place…nice stops.

Being nice sustains "nice" - with a caveat

In my thesis the solution was (I thought) simple - if the organisation supported the team worker in the creation of the nice experience for the customer it would create a virtuous cycle (ie. rather than the more common vicious one of the management seeing - oh this is nice, let's demand more of the staff - and the staff burning out). Another element to this was the management and staff working as a team - sometimes to put the customer or client in their place (rather than the former letting the latter deal with a problem that wasn't originally of their making and they may have little authority to solve!) And while the customer or client may be grateful, the irony was that would sometimes keep the staff member in a toxic system longer than was healthy!

"Nice" often starts with a person, but is maintained by the system

In the healthiest organisations (and arguably friendships and personal relationships) - nice (or nicer) is created by the individual, but needs to be maintained by the collective - whether that is through gratitude (see caveat above), reciprocity or (the best) embedding it within the system or environment.

At an individual level positive change can happen but is harder to maintain, but when people work together contributing the invisible things - time, efforts, recognition, reciprocity and (sometimes finances too) - "nice" lasts.

Dr Audrey Tang (AFBPsS) is a chartered psychologist, award-winning business author, and leadership trainer and speaker.