Why the #1 message to give travellers is reassurance that you are keeping them safe.

Hi, this is Jim James, and I am speaking today from a place called Puerto Ventura, the Canary Islands. Now, we've just escaped for a week's holiday, but it doesn't stop me wanting to stay in touch with you, the Unnoticed Entrepreneur, because I wanted to share this question: how do we replace the smile? What PR can do to create an antidote to the pandemic fatigue. Now, the reason I'm raising this is because I've just taken the tests to return back to the UK and done those tests also for my children and with my wife. Now, this is our second tranche of tests before we go back to England, having done tests just 72 hours before we left England. Now, what I'm finding is that the whole experience of going on holiday, frankly, has become quite stressful. And I'm not someone who normally suffers from stress, and certainly not from travel stress, but I've got to say that travelling now makes me a little bit nervous. Not because I'm worried about getting sick, but because there are so many different rules and regulations And apps and forms that all need to be done and completed, loaded, downloaded, re-uploaded within specific deadlines, that you need to have like an MBA or a degree in administration just to go on vacation. So I thought, I'm not alone. And I thought, why don't I just share some thoughts for anyone All of us that are running businesses right now, as we try and reassure our stakeholders, that is our staff, our partners, and our customers, that it's safe to go back, back in the water, as we're doing here in Fuerteventura. But how is it going to be safe for your staff? How is it going to be safe for your partners or your customers to come back and do business with you? Now, I've been reading about pandemic fatigue. Now, people are feeling demotivated and struggling with keeping up with some of the rules and regulations that are required in order to stay abreast of your vaccine and local vaccine requirements. Now, in England, obviously, we've had the pingdemic where people are actually starting to disengage the NHS app because they're afraid of being pinged. Now, if you're staying in the country and you don't need to travel, then you can start to detach yourself from some of the organs of government, the instruments of government for staying in touch and for tracking you and the people around you. But if you're traveling, or if you need to go outside of your immediate bubble, then you need to have some reassurance. And this seems to be the watchword really now around travel and business in general, is that reassurance is going to be the number one message to give anybody. Reassurance, because nothing happens unless you feel safe. I can't get on the plane, I can't get my family, my children to get on the plane, and What I've also realized is not just about reassurance for me, it's about the reassurance that I can provide other people, including my family who have different thresholds of anxiety, but also the people around me. Because what we've really also seen during this pandemic is that we are all interconnected and people's behavior is impacted by that of those around them. So in spite of the growing prevalence of vaccine and double jabs, for example, as I've been fortunate enough to have, there are the signs now where people have got an anxiety about COVID and are having issues, for example, like constantly checking their temperature. If my daughter has a cold, Or has a friend that has a runny nose, they start to worry if they've got COVID. We used to just think of it as cold or flu, blow your nose and you'll be fine. There's this need for obsessive cleaning where it doesn't matter where one goes now, you're always supposed to use these solutions on your hand. I worry that children won't be able to go to anywhere in their lives without thinking about sanitization and hygiene and the need for these fluids and sterilizations and so on. So as we travel or as we go to work, I think we need, as communicators and as entrepreneurs who need to communicate, we need to think about how we reassure people. In America, apparently 18% of the population suffers from an anxiety disorder already. Now, that's from the National Institute of Mental Health. Now, it's higher in women, and yet often it's the women who are responsible for the administration of, for example, family travel. Now, this group called Teladoc in America, uh, says that one of the first restrictions put in place during the pandemic, um, was COVID. And now that the pandemic is being relaxed, people are traveling more, and that's creating this level of anxiety all of a sudden. So what do we do? I think now we have to think about, as entrepreneurs, business owners, Every stage of the journey that our customer or our staff or our partner has with us has to have some reassurance. Now, in the Active Communications Index, I talk about the 3 elements of communication to be content, channels, and consistency. So I think all the content that we now create has to be reassuring. All the channels have got to be active, but more importantly and most importantly, it has to be consistent over time. Now, what I've noticed is that the impact on behavior of people is that when they're traveling, for example, to work, they're going to be more stressed when they arrive than they would have been before. The other day, waiting for a coffee, I had my mask on, and a man behind me tapped me on the shoulder when I went to get my coffee. He went to tell me that I'd jumped the queue. Actually, I hadn't jumped the queue. My wife was in front of me, and we were getting our drinks together. Now, what wasn't possible was any of the normal facial expressions that give people reassurance. Now, there's a website and a company in America called iMotions. And they talk about a module that they've got, a technology application that provides facial expression measures for 20 different facial expressions. There are 7 core emotions of joy, anger, fear, distrust, disgust, contempt, sadness, and surprise. And these, these emotions are some of the basic indices of whether people that we are surrounding ourselves with are happy or not with our behavior. And obviously this man in the, in the queue when we're getting coffee is not happy with my behavior. In the past, he might have given me a frown, but with the masks now, I could just see his brow, his eyes, but I can't see his smile. So We have all these expressions of emotions that are facial expressions that can no longer be seen because of mask wearing. So when I talk about the need for reassurance, I want us to all think about how can we provide reassurance when one of the most obvious forms of reassurance, the facial expression, is no longer available. Now, there is a very good website called Very Well Mind, and there, there's a person called Dr. Kendra Cherry and Dr. Stephen Ganz who wrote about how different parts of our facial expressions communicate different things. So an eye gaze, for example, when a person looks directly into your eyes while having a conversation, it indicates they're interested in paying attention. However, if it's prolonged eye contact, it can feel threatening. On the other hand, breaking eye contact and frequently looking away might indicate that the person is distracted. Now, as we're looking at each other, for example, when we're checking in at the booking gate now in the airport, a lot of that now is automated, but there are people there on site to help. Where are they looking? If I'm a customer and they're not looking at me, it's hard for me to know that they're engaged. What about if that person is blinking? They may just have tired eyes, but it may also be a way of attracting attention. I thought particularly interesting is the mouth, because as Cherry and Ganz wrote, they say the smile may be genuine, but it can also be used to express a false happiness. Sarcasm, or even cynicism. The mouth, and as we know, the smile— and there's studies to show some smiles are genuine and some are not depending on how they wrinkle their face— can communicate a great deal. And we're just talking about adult to adult, but if we think about if we have a business that's engaging younger people, for example children, or if we're engaging with people from different cultures, we have even more opportunity for miscommunication. So again, it comes down to reassurance. Pursed lips— tightening the lips may be an indicator of distaste, distrust, or disapproval. If someone's wearing a mask, you can't tell that. So that German fellow in the coffee line, he couldn't see, I couldn't see. Lip biting— we were not obviously lip biting, but people sometimes bite their lips if they're worried or anxious or stressed. We can't see that. In people, for example, if they're waiting in a queue, normally we'd have an idea because we could see from their facial expressions what was going on. We can't see that now. What about if they cover the mouth? In Asia, many people cover their mouth. For example, if they're if they're smiling or laughing, Asians often cover their mouth to hide their teeth. So there are many aspects which the face. Will help the customer express to us what they're feeling, and therefore we can display our empathy. But also we, as for example a service provider, might display our sense of self-confidence, or we may give them reassurance. Those things are not possible now. So the question is, to what degree does your company or your service rely on the human expression for communication? And if it does a great deal, then I would say it's worth thinking about the level of anxiety that's increased now due to COVID and what can be used to replace some of these basic physiological and emotional cues. Don't laugh, but in Singapore, whenever you go to the toilets, when you leave, there's a little bank of emoticons and you can press the screen to say if you're satisfied, somewhat satisfied, or dissatisfied. They actually give you the ability to smile or frown electronically. It happens also at the passport gates in China, and you're allowed to give feedback on the performance of the official that stamped your passport. You always want to give them a smile in case they're taking a note, of course. But do we have some mechanisms to reassure people, to let them know that we're there for them? And when I look at what this resort, TUI, is doing, they're doing a very good job where there is signage everywhere and I'm getting multimodal communication. I'm getting an app with updates, I'm getting SMSs with an update, I'm getting an email with an update, and And also lots of signage at the swimming pool, in the restaurants, in the restrooms where we play evening games. Everything that could be an indicator to reassure me that this is a safe place for me and my family is being done. So I wanted to share this message because whilst I'm on holiday, I'm still thinking about how to communicate, but also some of the feelings and some of the emotions that people are going through when they're getting to you. Now, if it's all online, of course it's different altogether, but that's where live chat, or using now some of these avatars, or using video of your own is so important, because we communicate so much by the way that we look and the way we look at each other. And if nearly 20% of the population has almost chronic anxiety, that's 20% maybe of your customers or your staff that are feeling the same way. How can we use communications to reassure them that they're safe, that they can engage with us, and that we can get on with our lives and our businesses and our workplaces so we can all start to move forward towards a better, more natural life? Thank you so much for listening to this slightly different travel version of the Unnoticed Show, and I hope that no matter where you are, you are safe, and that if you're looking at people around you, give them some reassurance as well that things are under control and that things are going to get better. Because as an entrepreneur, that is part of our job, is to give other people reassurance and guidance that we are learning and working towards a better future for them.