What Every Client Deserves, Part 1 — Being Seen

Where I live, I rarely take the highway.

Two lanes going each direction can develop a two-mile backup in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee, all because someone’s radiator decided this was the morning. I’ll gladly tack on an extra five minutes on the side streets every time. I know five different ways to reach my parking lot, and I’ve driven all of them depending on my mood, the season, and whether I need to make a stop.

One of the five routes takes me past a gas station convenience store. And before I started seriously paying attention to what I was eating, my guilty pleasure was Hostess Zingers. Vanilla. Three to a pack. Breakfast of champions. Don’t judge.

There was always a kind older man behind the counter. Big voice, warm presence, and the same greeting every single morning: “Good morning, my man.” I’d reply with “Good morning, Sir,” grab my Zingers, and approach the counter with a five-dollar bill. The total was always $3.72. And every time, without variation, he’d look at the register and deadpan: “That’ll be 372 dollars.”

And I’d place my five on the counter and say, “There’s 500. I’ll take $128 in change, please.”

We did this for months. A Vaudeville routine neither of us rehearsed, performed for an audience of nobody, perfected through pure repetition. It was one of the better parts of my morning.

One day, with no one else in the store and no particular reason except that it felt like time, I said: “By the way, my name’s Chris.”

He stuck out his hand.

“I’m Sammy.”

From that morning forward I greeted him as Mr. Sammy. He still calls me “my man,” and I suspect he always will. He encounters hundreds of people a day. I’m the big guy who used to buy Zingers and now buys Diamond smokehouse almonds. He carries the warmth. I carry the name. Nobody’s keeping score, and the arrangement suits us both perfectly.

I think about that handshake more than you’d expect because in my professional life, I always have the name. It’s in the From: field when the first email arrives. It’s already there in my Canvas search for people. I know who I’m talking to when they need help with their course. Their name exists. What doesn’t always exist is the recognition, and that is a much different story.

For the past six years of fully-remote work, most of my clients have only ever seen me as a face wearing slim glasses and a white goatee in a two-inch by three-inch rectangle on a Zoom or Teams call. What they haven’t seen is the rest of me: 6’3”, wearing black, taking up considerably more hallway than the little window suggests. When I’m on campus for an in-person consult and I spot a client I remember from a previous video interaction, I understand completely why they might not place me. I’m not the Canvas guy from the small window anymore. I’m a person walking toward them, and for a half-second that reads as ambiguous.

So I make it easy.

I’ll modify my path slightly so I’m walking directly toward them. If I’m wearing a hat, it comes off. Even though I am soft-spoken by nature, I’ll use my projecting voice and say their name, their full name, and if students are nearby I’ll lead with the title because dignity matters in front of an audience. And then I watch their face do the thing.

The bewildered look. The half-second of trying to place me. Their face has an expression of concern since they’re being approached by a large stranger on a Tuesday afternoon who looks like they’re about to hand them a court summons. Instead I help them remember me, “I’m Chris Powell. I’m your Canvas Admin?” And everything changes. Their face immediately switches from apprehension to a big smile. And they greet me with a big “Hi! It’s so nice to see you out of a Zoom window!”

I often ask how the quarter is progressing for them. It’s open enough to invite honesty and not the usual question that elicits an ambiguous “Fine” for a response.

I also know they’re in transit. They have somewhere to be. So I wrap it up deliberately: “Well, I’m off to a consult in Haggard Hall.” A slight bow, because I’m usually looking down at them and the bow closes the distance without being strange about it. “I’m glad I got to run into you in person. Have a good afternoon.”

And we part ways.

The whole thing takes maybe ninety seconds. But something happened in those ninety seconds that six months of Zoom calls didn’t accomplish. I saw them. Not the ticket. Not the little video window. Not the subject line. I saw the person.

And now they see me. The person, not just the Canvas guru.

Mr. Sammy probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup, but he’d recognize the energy the moment I walked through the door, the guy who takes $128 in change and means it. That’s not nothing. That’s actually quite a lot.

Being seen doesn’t require being remembered. It requires being met where you’re at. And in the 30 seconds it takes to remove a hat, say a person’s name, and ask one honest question based on genuine interest, you can meet someone in a way that outlasts every transaction that came before it.

That’s the whole methodology, right there in the hallway.

More later...