Hear What Your Customer Means, Not What They Say
Let me tell you a story.
I once had to visit a chiropractor. (the result of an overzealous 'twist-off' on the dance-floor)
As I hobbled in, I noted a sign on the wall. It read:
Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.
Consider the fundamental truth of that.
Consider too how many times we rush into prescribing solutions for clients before we truly understand what the problem really is. Consider how many of your clients do the same. Consider how many of your clients really don’t understand what their customers actually want. For example, they believe their customers want low prices when in fact that may not be the reality.
Consider how it works in a typical accountancy practice, for example.
A client comes in. “Help,” they say. “I can’t get the money for the payroll. I need to borrow some more funds. Can you give me an updated cash-flow so that we can take that down to the Bank and get more funds?”
So the typical accountant cranks out the cash-flow, bills out the $500 or whatever and thinks the job has been done.
That’s rather like my Chiropractor fixing my knee when the problems in my back. The person with the cash-flow problem doesn’t have a cash-flow problem at all — well, they do, of course, but that’s not really the problem.
The problem might be that their prices are too high or too low, or it might be that their quality is terrible, or it might be that the phone answering systems are non-existent
The point about the chiropractor analogy is this. Clearly, I’d suffered an injury — after all, what sane person over 40 engages in 'twist-offs' expecting a good outcome?! But he wasn’t just going to fix the problem. He was going to use his skills to find out if there were other root causes of the problem. Put it another way — he wanted to see if there was some underlying cause of the symptom.
And that’s the point here. We need to develop systems for REALLY listening to what clients need.
In the practice, it’s important to understand that running systems like customer service training sessions is truly important. Yet if the things that process uncovers are not what the clients need, then the work on your customer service may be in vain.
This is why a little meeting called a "Customer Advisory Board" is so important (more on this in the next blog).
But even there, it’s a matter of listening in special ways. It’s a matter of getting what we call, “Below the Waterline” and using what we call “The Titanic Principle.”
Let’s examine that. Consider the iceberg that the Titanic hit. The point of impact was BELOW the waterline. And the reason is quite simple — it couldn’t see it.
(I listened in to a replay of an old radio broadcast once where a reporter was talking to a survivor of the disaster. “How come you hit the iceberg?” asked the reporter. The survivor replied, “It didn’t look that big at the time.”)
And that’s exactly how it is with our clients and customers. Many times, the customer says something and we only hear what they said rather than what they meant.
The parallel to the Titanic is in this version of the iceberg:
It’s these deeper needs “underneath the waterline” that we really need to fill. And we can only fill them when we know what they are. That requires REALLY listening and REALLY being prepared to ask questions in different ways.
Many of these questions form part of various optional Polaris coaching programs. For now, you need to note that key questions are phrases like:
- Could you elaborate on that for me
- Could you tell me more
- Why is that such an important area for you
- What would be the effect of that .....
- Would it be useful if ...
- What other way this could help you
Relate this back to your customers or clients — what do they want? Well, they may want more profit, but the key question is WHY?
The Why holds the key. It might be so that they have a better lifestyle. It might be so that they can get more discretionary time because more profit leads to greater security.
Let’s take another example. People go into restaurants because they want food, right? Possibly. One friend put it this way, “People are hungrier for recognition than they ever are for the food.” Worth pondering isn’t it?
The skilled communicator is always working at these “deeper” levels.
Listening, and then systematizing that listening is a major key to being able to do that effectively.
Finally, always remember that life is a moving parade.
People’s needs are constantly evolving and changing. Your products and services (and those of your clients) must evolve and change as well. Keep listening. Keep responding to what you hear.
For help implementing customer service systems, or conducting a Customer Advisory Board in your business, contact Kerry.