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How to Stop Treating Customers Like Transactions

In CEO
June 04, 2025

Helping people travel around the world is a unique responsibility. It is not about presenting a product to their lives. It’s about introducing them The world. Consider your own most recent trip. It is likely that with new people, try new foods and see places that you could not have previously imagined.

But what is needed to bring thesis gifts to others? For Heidi Durflinger, CEO of EF World Journeys, means building relationships that go beyond the transactional.

“Traveling is very personal,” says Durflinger in a recent episode of the podcast of corporate competition. “What we sell is something that is a emotional Buys. “

The ability to obtain the emotional side of work is a skill that goes back to your education. Growing up in a small agricultural city in Belleville, Kansas, the future CEO learned the value of experiencing different cultures thanks to their parents, who organized international exchange students. Then, 16, Durflinger was an exchange student, first traveling to Bologna, Italy, who lit a passion for life for global exploration.

That training moment not only shaped his vision of the world, but also laid the foundations for a career dedicated to unite people through transformative travel experiences. For Durflinger, it’s about people. That idea remains central, and demonstrated that ethic at the beginning of this decade duration of the pandemic.

“[We were] A travel company that [couldn’t] Help people travel at that time, “he says. Then, she and the company turned.” We made welfare calls to our clients, “he said.” Just to see how they are doing pandemia. “

It may seem a surprising strategy, but when you consider the EF World Journeys mission, it makes a lot of sense. “It is important that we listen to our customers,” says Durflinger, “connect with our clients and connect them together.”

Durflinger shares other important ideas in the podcast that include:

• Di ‘Yes’. Durflinger’s mother told her that things are in life that people say ‘no’ to often regret more. “Never regret Going for something. Take opportunities when they arrive. “

Enjoy training. In sports and businesses, to achieve an average goal of taking incremental measures to get there. For Durflinger, an ultramarkon corridor, it is not about crossing boxes or miles at the same time. “When you wear it in narrower pieces where you work,” he says, “becomes attainable.”

Extend your goals. Similarly, as you reach your goals, it is important to extend them even more. “In my marathon training,” says the CEO, “I will suddenly realize,” Wow, I simply ran 13 miles and felt good, and then I ran 15 miles, and then I reached 20, and I still feel great. “

For Durflinger, connecting to customers is as important as offering something in the market. Without that emotional bridge, relationships simply become transactional. And that, she says, is not a way of experiencing the world.