Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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June 7, 2010

The Preschool Teacher and the 3 Year Old: When Customers Misbehave!

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 8:37 am

Not a Focus Group Kid

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I’m a teacher. I love teachers. We’re all teachers in some way. So I can tell this story with friendship and compassion. Besides if you read on, you’ll see it’s not about teachers at all, but about companies and customers …

From the start we knew our son wasn’t going to be “focus group” material. He decided when to be born — and even then, the doctor had to go to extremes to convince him to join the world. (I was pretty sure he’d be driving a car out when he did.)

By 2, he could write, spell, and read, but he had no interest in conversation. He didn’t draw until he was 5. He preferred to examine the world through his own eyes and perfect his handwriting, like an athlete or a musician might — hours a day, practicing each movement until he perfected it and then practicing again. That same year, he developed an entire sign alphabet.

Let’s just say that in his preschool class, our son was a niche market. His preschool teacher, an upright authoritarian, was used to serving a one-size-fits-all market. She had her objectives, her goals, and her expectations. As you can imagine, theirs was not a relationship made in heaven.

At the first teacher-parent conference, Ms. Authority laid it all out for me exactly what my son was doing wrong. I heard a short litany of complaints about this young customer misbehaving.

Of course, the problems were all his.

  1. He doesn’t pay attention. “I work hard everyday planning magnificent lessons around fans and feathers,” she said. ” … so that he can learn the letter f,” she went on. “He ignores what we’re doing and walks over to the magnifying glass. He looks at wheels on toy trucks and spines on books.”
  2. He’s defiant. “When I tell him to sit in the time out chair, he defies me. He outright asks what will happen if he doesn’t sit there!”
  3. He’s got a hearing defect and could be deaf. “No matter how loud I talk, he doesn’t pay attention. You need to have him tested. I think he might be deaf.” (I’m not making this up.)

Except, I knew the problems weren’t problems at all. It was all I could do explain that to her. You see, this customer was ignoring her because she had nothing to offer.

  1. He already knew how to read, write and spell. Had she let him near the magnetic letters he would have written out words like “cough” and “pharmacy.”
  2. He’s curious and careful, not defiant. Had she gotten to know him, she would have found out that he can’t make a decision without knowing where it would lead.
  3. It wasn’t his hearing. Had she walked up behind him to whisper “chocolate cake,” she might have seen how well he listened to important words.

Instead, she was the center of her universe. She saw her customer through a filter of expectations. The data set said his behavior was not right and she filled in an explanation.

She had made the offer about HER … not about him.

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With the right offer to the same customer — say a magnifying glass and a set of magnetic letters — she might have made a loyal fan who would be looking for what she was going to bring out next for him.

We do the same thing in business, we design something that we’re sure the perfect customers will love, but sometimes we forget to ask them what thrills them.

What do you advise when someone complains about customers misbehaving?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed under Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog | 7 Comments »




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7 Comments to “The Preschool Teacher and the 3 Year Old: When Customers Misbehave!”

  1. June 7th, 2010 at 8:59 am
    LoveFeast Table said

    I love this post!! Being a mama of a unique 3 year old and four other kids who learn and explore in different ways!
    I always trained my employees to “anticipate the customer’s need before they even knew the need”. To serve guests in a fashion that creates an experience that will bring them back, you have to be intuitive, willing to take risks and willing to think outside the box! I think some of it can be trained, but much comes from experience and learning to read each customer!
    ~kristin

  2. June 7th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
    Tamsen said

    Hi Liz, love your posts. Short, concise and thought-provoking. My daughter of the same nature just graduated from a Talented and Gifted High School. I am thankful these teachers understood that if they did not work very hard to have the right offer to these students the program would fail. Because of their discipline-Townview Talented and Gifted remains Newsweeks choice as the Best High School in America.

    Liz, I also thank you for your conversation Friday. I am thinking and thoughtful about what we discussed. You’re terrific! I see us continuing…. Best, Tamsen

  3. June 7th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Kristin!
    Thank you!
    I’ve been finding the more I concentrate on the folks I’m serving, the better it goes for me too. Bring them out, raise their expectations, and they’ll be back. That’s what I’m thinking. :)

    Reading other people is mostly about listening in every way we know how, don’t you think?

  4. June 7th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Tamsen,
    How wonderful to see you here! It’s a good thing when a teacher pays attention to her students too. :)

    I’m delighted to hear your daughter had such a great experience with education. We need more stories like that one. :)

  5. June 8th, 2010 at 8:37 am
    Neille Hoffman said

    Liz – this was a fantastic and fun read. I think many of us fall into the same routine, knowing that we want to get from A to Z on a very specific path (that has always worked). Sometimes we forget to enjoy the experience and journey and what it might teach us.

  6. June 8th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Neille!
    What find to come home and find you here! We do get stuck into thinking people should act a certain way, don’t we? I like remembering that just when we’re sure that folks will done something, they don’t. heh heh

  7. September 7th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
    susan said

    You have given me an attitude adjustment. I sometimes want to attend to my agenda without realizing who I am suppose to be helping. Reading verbal cues is a good tool for teachers to aquire. Touble is, when there is a classroom full of 3 year olds who all would love to have their own way, this is hard to attend to. But a persistent child usually gets my atention and I do my best at that point to accept the challenge and create curriculum based on the needs of the individual.

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