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Have you ever encountered a customer who had that "lost" look?

There's something about their facial expression and body language that tells you they are having trouble finding their way. You probably made a difference in their experience if you seized the moment and offered them assistance.

What if I told you there were many more opportunities like this, but we don't often see them?

There are customers who need extra help, but we don't realize it. There are opportunities to go the extra mile, but we don't see them. There are even clear signals that can help us prevent service failures, but we miss them.

I recently did an interview with Investors Business Daily to share some tricks for improving your powers of observation. Here is some more details on what I shared, plus another one of my favorite exercises.

Change Your Lens

It's easy to get locked into one perspective.

In her book, What Great Brands Do, brand leadership expert Denise Lee Yohn shares a story about a fast food chain with dirty stores that were a real turnoff to customers. Executives weren't aware of this issue because they didn't look through the lens of a customer when they visited various locations.

So Yohn gave the executives an assignment. Each one, including the CEO, had to visit one of their locations, go into the restroom, and sit on the toilet.

It was an eye-opening experience. The chain's executives suddenly realized exactly how dirty the stores had become. The exercise forced them to see the stores the way a customer would.

Experiencing your product or service the way a customer would is one way to change your lens. Another way is to literally move yourself to a different location.

Here's a picture I took from Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest point in North America at 280 feet below sea level. 

From this perspective, there's not much to see. The landscape looks desolate, even boring, with the faint outline of some mountains off in the distance. What you can't see in the picture is it was also 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here's the same landscape from a different perspective. This picture was taken from a vantage point 5,000 feet above the valley.

The sweeping view is quite beautiful. The white swirls you see are salt flats, which create quite a contrast with the red earth. It's also nearly 30 degrees cooler up here.

Pause and Reflect

We can sometimes get locked in to a particular assignment, which causes us to miss something else entirely. 

Here's a short video that illustrates the concept.

Most people who watch this video accomplish only one of two things. They either correctly count the number of times the team in white passes the basketball, or they observe the other thing. It's tough to do both.

This explains how servers in a busy restaurant can forget to refill our drinks, or a repair technician can forget to call us back. There's a good chance they got locked into other activities and missed something obvious.

You can learn more about selective attention from The Invisible Gorilla, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. Their research is truly amazing.

The cure to the selective attention problem is to take periodic breaks where you step back from whatever you are working on and look at the big picture.

For example, I review my calendar and project planner on a daily basis to identify my top priorities. I also do a more comprehensive review once per week where I update all of my action plans. This prevents me from missing an assignment that's about to come do or forgetting to follow-up with a client.

Find Something New

My wife, Sally, and I visited a well-known winery in Napa Valley last November. The tasting menu featured a grape we had never heard of, Sauvignon Black.

Our host gave us a puzzled look when we asked about it. "Do you mean Sauvignon Blanc," she asked?

No, we really were asking about Sauvignon Black. It turned out the tasting menu had a typo and it really was supposed to be Sauvignon Blanc, a popular grape used to make white wine. Our host sheepishly admitted the same menu had been in the tasting room for two months, and nobody had caught the error!

You can help avoid situations like this by playing a little game.

Take a walk through your store, office, or wherever you work. While you are walking, try to spot something you've never noticed before. You'll be surprised at what you see!

I like to do this exercise in my neighborhood. I'll take a walk around the block or down to my neighborhood park, and try to see something I've never noticed. I notice something new every time I try this exercise.

Additional Resources

You can learn more about improving your powers of observation from this short video on LinkedIn Learning.