Most companies run customer service training, and so do we.

There’s a difference between what we do and what most places do, though.

We train our crew to see people.

Yes, that sounds obvious doesn’t it?

The plague of our times is invisibility, loneliness and a lack of places where we can be ourselves.  Places where we can be truly, deeply seen by others.

Places where we can be met where we are in our lives, or on that particular day – not where we’re supposed to be.

Most of us just want to be noticed by others – not in a Diva-esque way, just a human way.

I remember seeing the ‘Change blindness’ experiment a few years ago and being horrified.

In the experiment, the person serving behind a counter switches with another person – and in 75% of cases, the person being served doesn’t notice.

(here is it if you haven’t seen it before)

Now, the scientists put this down to ‘change blindness’ and this may well be something all humans do – but I can’t help thinking that, if we made eye contact and actually SAW somebody in front of us, this mistake would be impossible.

So, instead of learning some slick patter to ‘make customers feel welcome’, we work on seeing our customers (we like to call you visitors, by the way!) as individual people.

I’m not saying our crew get this right every time – we don’t.  Everyone has busy days and bad days, or just days where one slips into automatic pilot.

But it’s the core of our training and the core of what we aim to achieve.  We aim to really see you, as you really are, and accept and welcome you as you are, the day you walk in here.