Lessons In Engagement Are Everywhere
What Little League snack stands can teach us about engagement, value, and innovation.
It is Little League season, so many nights and weekends, you can find me cheering on the kiddos through their wins and losses. There’s nothing like the anxiety of a close game to burn calories for us moms, necessitating consuming copious amounts of sugar and fat. Fortunately, many of the fields in our area have little snack stands to help fundraise for the teams.
These snack stands are volunteer-run, and the volunteers generally get little to no training. If these volunteers are lucky, somewhere on the wall is a list of opening and closing procedures (i.e., turn on the frier and let it heat up for 20 minutes, unlock the cash drawer, plug in the pot of Cheez-Wiz). A few lines are usually devoted to food safety, but customer service is primarily left to that evening’s volunteer team.
I recently attended two consecutive games and visited the snack stands with wildly different results.
Game #1: Three people were working this snack stand, and no one was in line with me. I approached and read the menu while they were cooking. Eventually, someone turned around and gestured for me to give my order. They got all my food together quickly and counted out my change flawlessly and soundlessly. No hellos, no thank yous, and no smiles that I recall.
Game #2: Two people were working the window, and one person was cooking, and this time there was a long line. When it was my turn, I was greeted with a huge smile and a perky, “What can we get for you?”. I put in my order, which took a while to prepare. My order came out with a few other orders. The lovely lady working the window delivered the orders incorrectly, but she was so friendly we all laughed and didn’t mind as we reshuffled the food. I gave them a few extra bucks for their fundraising fund and got a thank you from all three people, including the cook at the grill.
One of the things I say in my keynotes is that for engagement to happen, you’ve got to deliver good value AND a good experience. But here’s the thing: when you create a great experience for people, you can even miss up the value a bit once in a while, and people will give you a pass. (Note the huge implication for innovation: your innovations don’t have to be perfect at launch, just double down on creating a great experience and let your audience tell you how to perfect the value.)
