I love those moments when the light suddenly comes on, when the epiphany happens on something key.

I get to see this quite a lot with my work around social. People who suddenly realise the cyber world that lurks beneath the surface, like an explosion of connectivity and community…there are people all over the world, having conversations, giving their opinions, sharing work and ideas.   It wasn’t that long ago I was one of those people who didn’t understand. Sure, I had a Facebook account which I tinkered with but using social for work seemed like a waste of time, something I couldn’t possibly squeeze into my already bulging days.

So I understand. Then piece by piece my world started to get more social, it didn’t happen overnight in fact it happened little by little …but suddenly, here I am, connecting with amazing experts across the world, working on great new projects and helping others to navigate this new world.

This week someone that I coach, who was a relatively social novice but keen to learn, has suddenly discovered LinkedIn.   Sure, they had a profile before, it lacked a photo, any detail or quite frankly anything human but it was there….wasn’t that enough? But when they started to dig deeper, to add in more, to give more of themselves, the social world return in spades. From 18 connections to over 400 in a matter of weeks. They were BLOWN AWAY. How had they not realised there was this whole new world they could engage in?!?  And now they are telling everyone!

Because those who have come from the cynic to becoming an active user are usually also the best advocates. Telling everyone who will listen that they should get onto this.

It works that way in customer service to. Give someone good service in the first place, great. But take someone who has complained and fix it for them and then take it up a notch…well, that’ll be a customer for life.

Like when I bought my Dyson. Never lose suction, my butt, five years (yes five years) after we bought it, it started losing suction. I was pretty harsh,  telling everyone about the crappy vacuum and don’t believe their “never loses suction” story. When I finally decided to ring Dyson, expecting a lame response, they blew me away with their concern. They asked me all sorts of questions, never asked me for a receipt, sent me a new airfilter for free…and guess what, it worked (it appears perhaps we should have been washing the filter every few months, woops).   Now here I am telling everyone how great Dyson are.

So the cynics are always my favourite to work with. The ones who don’t believe social will help them, who are comfortable in their current ways of working and don’t want to try something new. Because if I can challenge them, push them over the edge, they will become my greatest advocates…and it reminds me too, to always be open minded and be willing to try something new, because you never know when the next lightbulb moment is going to be.