Unresolved and unresolved conflicts in a workplace, within a community, have a serious impact on organisational performance and often lead to serious losses in revenue and company image. If managers and employees fail to manage conflict appropriately, its negative effects will have long-lasting repercussions at the group and individual levels. The impact of this negative and accumulating workplace stress is the most destructive factor in our daily lives. The loss of GDP caused by workplace stress, and at European level this amount exceeds € 500 billion. The short-term effects are irritability or depression, fatigue, impatience, instability, anxiety symptoms. In the long term, mistakes multiply due to lack of concentration and staff are easily distracted. Communication is one of the most important aspects of conflict management, as it is the function of communication to establish and maintain contact and exchange information. It is precisely in these areas that conflict causes defects. The relationship changes and is damaged as a result of the conflict, and the distortion of communication is a symptom of this. Communication can also be at the root of the conflict itself, which can be addressed by using the tools of assertive communication. Conflict situations can arise within the organisation, just as conflict situations can arise between

Collaborative methods of conflict management can help not only to manage tension immediately, but also to maintain a stable positive situation in the long term. We have chosen a method for the organisation that can be used with or without a mediator if necessary. This is intended to be equally applicable when dealing with organisational or client conflicts that arise, depending on whether the parties involved require the involvement of this third party. The steps of Daniel Shapiro’s conflict management concept place great emphasis on recognising and managing one’s own and others’ emotions. Steps:

• Recognizing the conflict. Recall how you have felt in past conflict situations – role play, situational exercises.
• Our feelings. Examining our emotions What do I feel? Why? What does the other person feel? Why?
• What are we trying to achieve? Exploring our own and each other’s basic needs Identify the needs of both parties. Jointly summarise regularly recurring situations in the work environment and in client relationships, and develop “routine” solution templates.
• Our ideas. Explore possible solutions to the conflict.
• Our plan. Identification and mutual acceptance of a solution that satisfies the core interests of both parties. Selection, agreement, implementation.

The Customer Experience Survey shows that 26 percent of customers would be willing to pay up to 10 percent more than the market average if providers offered a higher customer experience. In the same survey, business leaders indicate that they believe that companies that do not provide a high level of brand-consistent customer experience could lose 21.2 percent of their revenue.

The customer experience is defined as the customer impression that is created at all touch points in the customer journey as a result of the rational and emotional, conscious and subconscious influences that they experience. For most business segments, especially banking, insurance, retail, telecommunications, hospitality and public services, delivering a high customer experience has become one of the most important business objectives.

Customer management processes – user experience, organisational development must be designed in such a way that the tools, methods and results they achieve make the organisation self-learning about customer management.

Stress management and burnout prevention

• Working to particularly complex rules and instructions
• When decisions have to be made on the basis of incomplete information, are difficult to understand, or in complex, new situations
• Distracting stimuli that take concentration away from the work (frequent phone calls, clients, etc.)
• Dealing with a series of problems in rapid succession
• Particularly heavy responsibilities (financial responsibilities, decisions and tasks that seriously affect people’s lives)
• Monotonous, repetitive action (routine but complex administration, similar cases)
• Work requiring a particularly high level of attention or patience

Persona development 

The persona is a great tool not just for branding and marketing activities but to prevent the conflict with the target group, users. A customer persona is an approximate fictitious profile that attempts to define the average customer. It is usually based on market research data, where available and budgeted. The more elements you include to create a complete profile, the better, because the more accurate a calculation you can make. This includes demographic data, your customers’ life goals, daily routines, motivations, the goals that drive them, their lifestyle and their behaviour in general. Generally speaking, the more detailed the better, which of course means the more time and money you have to invest in surveys.

The persona is what helps us to build a clear picture for our business of who our products and services are targeting, how they make decisions.  Since in most cases this cannot be a completely narrow group, there are several types of personas to target, so we usually need to develop several personas and create a common picture that forms a cross-section of our target market.

By providing a human focus to your business, buyer personas help you get a feel for your customers. This in turn allows you to make business decisions that best help you serve your customers.

If you are looking for a checklist of customer personas, they usually include the following information:

• Residence
• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Occupation
• Income, savings, financial situation
• Family status
• Motivations
• Daily problems, challenges
• Shopping habits
• Hobbies

Ethnicity and religion are usually included in this list, but this now raises serious ethical questions and is worth serious consideration.

Training exercise: Work out of a persona. In the project working group, the participants develop the target group of their planned service or product and identify the fictitious person or persons who will use it. If this is several different groups, they will create several person zones and a common cross-section of them. The description should include at least the aspects that have been presented in the list. This persona will be use for the branding and marketing planning later too. 

Tools for the exercise: Empty persona cards. Flip-Chart, Post-it – 4 colors, Blue Tech, Markers