The Consumer Connect project continues to excite me every single day! Every day I wake up excited about the opportunity to connect with more people and hear more stories and I’m definitely not let down. So far, I have experienced so many different emotions in all of the conversations with consumers. I’ve heard some consumers sound angry, aggravated, happy, content, or completely jaded. Overall I’ve gained insights, learned about new needs I may not have thought up before, and connected all of it with the business and the industry as a whole.
Day to day, I’m finding that committing to calls is a little challenging at times but the initiative and interests never fade. Sometimes I’m tired of talking and not looking forward to picking up the phone to give another consumer a call… but once I pick up the phone and start talking the natural conversationalist in me and the drive I have to learn takes over.
This project has offered me a holistic view into how every decision the leadership team at InterContinental Group and I make affects real people… hard working consumers.
I was on a call last week with an industry friend and who mentioned he was reading about the program online. It was nice to talk with another industry professional about how the project was going and the types of things I was learning about. He was genuinely interested and honestly confused why I launched it. He had connived himself it was a way for me to generate new leads and consumers for the company.
When I explained that was the furthest reason as to why I had launched Consumer Connect, and there was no lead generation in mind whatsoever… he was amazed that this was a sincere, selfless effort to learn more about consumers and connect with the company. Everyone always believes that financial industries come with an alternative motive. But that’s just another thing I realized through this process that needs to be changed.
This project may yield many unplanned benefits I never saw. This friend I spoke with was already telling me that now he would like to refer friends to come work for the company because of his new respect for my commitment. This was just a conversation I was having with a friend I had already known… so you can only imagine how beneficial all the conversations are that I have with total strangers I have never spoken with before.
Each day the project helps me grow more and more as a leader and I believe will benefit me the company and consumers for years to come. I look forward to hearing what more consumers have to say every single week and hear your thoughts and opinions. There’s no better way to learn about the current problems in the industry than hearing from people who’ve experiences the process firsthand. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow excited for the day ahead once again and learn even more than I did the day before.