Want to be more customer-centric? Try crossword puzzles.

• September 18, 2019

Six months ago, I started doing crossword puzzles. I did it so I’d spend less time staring at my phone but ended up with another, unexpected benefit. It turns out that crossword puzzles are as much about perspective-taking as they are about trivia or vocabulary. Perspective-taking is the essence of empathy, and empathy is the key to customer-centricity.

Subtle shifts in meaning can drastically change outcomes

When I’m stuck on a clue, it’s usually because I’m thinking the wrong way. Puzzle authors count on that. They pick words and phrases with many meanings, like this one: “Number of prime ministers on Downing Street.” The answer was 3 letters. I assumed “number” meant amount and answered “one.” There’s only one British Prime minister, right? Yes, but wrong. The word they wanted was “ten.” To figure that out, you had to read the clue as “the number of the place on Downing Street that belongs to the prime minister.” Subtle change, big difference.

Being able to look at things from many perspectives is key to running a customer-centric business. I once heard a leader say “customers thought these were marketing emails, but they’re not.” Wrong. If customers thought they were marketing emails, they were marketing emails. A better question to ask is “what made customers see these as marketing when that’s not what we intended?”

Knowledge gaps often derail an otherwise good experience
When you practice perspective-taking, you may also expose a knowledge gap between you and your customers. When I got stuck on the clue “Mel Torme’s nickname,” the problem wasn’t perspective. I’m just not familiar enough with 1950s pop culture to come up with “The Velvet Fog” on my own.

The same thing happens with customers all the time. Last week I had problems tagging people in LinkedIn posts I wanted to schedule via Hootsuite. The service rep kept explaining “you can’t tag profiles, only pages,” which confused me. I thought they were the same thing, but she didn’t pick up on that. A few extra words – you can’t tag personal LinkedIn profiles, only company LinkedIn pages, – and our exchange would have been far less frustrating.

Most people, including that rep, aren’t trying to be difficult. Perspective-taking is hard, especially in the chaos of modern life. Our brains want to interpret things as fast as possible, so they call up the most common, familiar, or recent interpretation they can think of. We trust our brains, so we assume that’s right unless something external, like the wrong number of letter spaces, makes us think more broadly. Humans can learn to trigger new thinking without external cues, but it takes practice. That’s what crossword puzzles offer – a low-risk way to strengthen perspective-taking muscles that will help you deal with friends, family, and clients in the future.

How do you practice taking unusual perspectives? Maybe you act in local theater. You could read books or watch shows for which you’re not the target audience. (Tuning in to an old movie on the Outdoor Channel exposed this city-girl to a world of camping products she never knew existed!) Whatever you choose to do, I can assure you that empathy exercises will be eye-opening, often fun, and worth it for any leader who wants to stay more connected with their customers.