Who'd you make smile today?

Marketers and managers tell us to "delight" the customer. But they're usually talking about heroic gestures, "empowering the front line", and virtually always about how to use this "happy customers" focus as a competitive advantage. But sometimes it's the smallest of things that can make all the difference. Things that aren't bullet points in the brochure or check marks in product comparisons. Things that just... make you smile. Things the one who made you smile didn't need to do.

In the midst of a two-day travel hell to get to Australia two days ago, I landed in the Honolulu airport for a 9,256 hour layover. I was sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, and still mourning the loss of my lotion at Security Checkpoint Theater. And then I saw it. Marking the entrance to the Men's Restroom on the airport concourse is the typical international "MAN" symbol with one little upgrade... the little guy's wearing a Hawaiian shirt (even has a little lei). I smiled. For the first time in 12 hours.

Too often we see formal institutionalized smile-strategies... like the Southwest airline flight attendants inserting jokes into their safety speech. But some of those attendants are simply repeating the script, and it shows. It's a lot more smile-inducing when the flight attendant just blurts something out spontaneously, in response to something in realtime. Or when they announce to the entire plane that there's a couple in coach celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, having just returned from a romantic second honeymoon. Or when the pilot comes on and starts describing the joy of flying by telling you way too much about the physics of flight. THESE things make me smile, and for those of us who can't afford first-class, it comes just when we need it the most. And I want to know, "What causes these smile-inducing people to behave like this even though they don't need to?"

What are some other non-institutionalized things you can do to make someone smile? And what does it take to support that in your company without trying to institutionalize it? (which of course never actually works). I think we can all assume that someone who goes out of their way to bring a smile to your face--for no reason other than they want to--they must be feeling genuinely good. Those phoning-it-in aren't likely to make you smile. They aren't likely to smile themselves, let alone to care whether YOU do.

A few things that make me smile...
(That they didn't need to do)

* A thoughtful, almost imperceptible feature in a product. Something that surprises you that they'd have that attention to detail on something that appears to exist solely to make you a little happier, but adds nothing to the actual capability of the product. (Or so you might think... in reality, of course, it's those little things that can be the deal-makers or breakers in keeping us in flow).

* Easter eggs in software (good software... as an earlier commenter pointed out, if your software has big flaws and faults and I find an easter egg, it'll really piss me off that you spent resources on THAT instead of making a product that actually works)

* Insider references or homages (a form of easter egg) inside a product manual. (e.g. using TPS reports in a sample)

* Whimsical names for dishes on a menu (often this IS formalized, but sometimes it just feels like someone cared enough to make an otherwise dull diner a bit more festive)

* Playing foreign-language training tapes in the bathrooms of an ethnic restaurant.

* Fresh-baked cookies in the lobby. GOOD coffee in the reception area, not that crap instant with fake creamer. When I taste that first sip of really good coffee, I always close my eyes and smile. Bliss : )

Really, though, there's one really simple thing that we can do to make someone else smile.

Smile.

We've talked before about how scientists know that smiling produces physiological changes in your body. And thanks to mirror neurons, we know that seeing someone else smile or laugh can trigger the same neurons reponsible for making us smile.

But this cannot be faked:

But we can tell a real one by looking at the eyes, not the lips:

Crinkly eyes = real smile. No crinkly eyes? Faker. (or too much botox)

Bonus: take this BBC quiz to test your ability to spot the difference between someone who's smile is genuine vs. a faker.

Perhaps the real question should not be, "Who'd you make smile today?" but rather, "How can you get yourself to smile more?" We all know it's true... real, genuine, authentic, natural smiles are infectious. Picture the people you know who can light up a room when they walk in with a big, REAL, smile. We can all be those people. Imagine if someone told you that you had the power to instantly alter someone else's blood/brain chemisty in a positive way, potentially improving their immune system and giving them more physical energy. And all you had to do was flash them a smile. We can all be those people.

But for so many of us, we don't interact with our users face-to-face, so the next step, then, is to figure out how we can inspire ourselves and especially our employees and co-workers to "virtually" smile at our users by doing something with our products or services that causes them to smile. (Quickest change: do something with your online tech support pages. Next quickest, do something with the user documentation)

Remember, it's often the smallest of things. Like a bathroom sign that changed the rest of my day.

[Tip: keep a 'smile journal' for a week or two, and try to write down every little thing that caused you to smile when you interacted with a product or service or person, and look for a pattern (or at least some ideas you can use). You can also track another person you interact with, and write down how often THEY smile, and what caused it. If the notebook is nearly blank at the end of two weeks, time to rent some Monty Python.]

So, who'd you make smile today? Who made you smile today?