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Brick No159: The phenomenon of the Professional Smile
By Matt Weston, Thursday 8 September 2005 Don't say cheese Next time you need to get a passport photo taken, tape your mouth shut. New Home Office rules that come into force on Monday mean that, unless you look "straight at the camera with a neutral expression with [your] mouth closed", your passport application could get rejected. Ensure your 35mm by 45mm photo is taken against an off-white, cream or light grey, plain background . . . and that your mug takes up exactly 65-75% of the shot. Oh, and whatever you do, DON'T SMILE. That most basic of human expressions Apparently, the new high-tech facial recognition technology can only identify straight faces. Millions of pounds have been spent on a system that can't cope with that most basic of human expressions, the smile. Smiles matter. Last week I wrote about Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, and his belief that the most important one-thousandth of any customer's experience is the very first one- thousandth. For Jobs, it's all to do with how people interact with Apple products the first time they pick them up. For your small business, it could be what you say on your voicemail message, the clarity of your website homepage - or, of course, the sincerity of your smile. Factoid: The smile isn't just the most basic of human expressions - it's the single highest-leverage activity in the UK economy. Not smiling for passport photos won't really cost us anything, but imagine what would happen to sales if shopkeepers suddenly stopped smiling. The phenomenon of the Professional Smile There are two ways to smile. (And, as I'll explain in a minute, two ways to make a first impression.) The first smile, the Duchenne, is only produced as an involuntary response to genuine emotion. The second, the Professional (or Pan-Am) Smile, is the opposite - voluntary, and insincere. Note 40 from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a work of non-fiction by David Foster Wallace: "This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry; and noplace in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I am on the [cruise ship] Nadir: maitre d's, Chief Stewards, Hotel Managers' minions, Cruise Director -- their PS's all come on like switches at my approach." "But also back at land at banks, restaurants, airline ticket counters, on and on. You know this smile: the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia w/ incomplete zygomatic involvement, the smile that doesn't quiet reach the smiler's eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler's own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair?" "Who do they think is fooled by the Professional Smile?" How to make a lasting first impression Most advice meted out about first impressions is that you need to create a /professional/ first impression. That's plain wrong. And it's to blame not only for the Professional Smile, but also for the overuse of affected phone manner, canned photos, Flash homepages, and trophy receptionists. Nope - if you want to make a lasting first impression, you need to go Duchenne, not Professional. Put away the professional facade, and instead focus that very first one- thousandth of your customer's experience on what is genuinely hot about your product, service or shop. Some examples of what I mean - -- Photo-sharing site Flickr does it by randomly greeting you in dozens of different languages - Aloha Matt! Bonjour Matt! Ni hao Matt! Kamusta Matt! Giorno Matt! Ola Matt! etc etc What's hot about Flickr (recently bought by Yahoo!) is that you can instantly share photos with a community of 1.2 million other members, all across the world. Aloha! Bonjour! and Ni hao! aren't professional ways to greet me, but they do, for the teeniest effort on Flickr's part, say this is a global community - i.e. for everyone. -- When you walk into Soho-based trainer shop, Foot Patrol, the first thing you notice is that every trainer is displayed in its own, individual cage. This might seem like a gimmick, but what's hot about Foot Patrol is that it stocks a very exclusive (they say filtered) range. By putting every shoe in a cage, the very first impression you get is the right one. -- And Apple? Well, for me, the single hottest thing about the iPod is how easy its thumbwheel is to use. Other MP3 players store more songs, but they can't compete with the thumbwheel. So what does Apple do? It rigs up the thumbwheel to a speaker. This from Joel Spolsky: "Apple spent extra money putting a speaker in the iPod itself so that the thumbwheel clicky sounds would come from the thumbwheel. They could have saved pennies ... pennies! by playing the clicky sounds through the headphones. But the thumbwheel makes you feel like you're in control. People like to feel in control. It makes people happy to feel in control. The fact that the thumbwheel responds smoothly, fluently, and audibly to your commands makes you happy." Remember to sign up: back to top |
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