10. Be easy to do business with.
Remember how you would
like to be treated.
3
Notes de l'éditeur
Big idea: being easy to do business with does not just apply to our relationship with our customers.
It equally applies to all of our internal interactions with each other.
What’s it worth to us to have someone NOT writing or talking about us this way?
I’m going to be talking a lot about customers, and want to be sure that everyone knows what I mean when I say customer.
In many cases, for those of us not dealing directly with people on the outside, many of our colleagues are our customers.
e.g. Purchasing has lots of internal customers, with ISRs and PMs probably being their biggest ones.
How would I be feeling in this situation if the tables were turned?
How do you feel when quoted policy? Ever ordered takeout, been a block outside the delivery zone?
THIS IS NOT A PURELY EXTERNAL THING. NONE OF THIS IS!
Either literally or figuratively. It’s an attitude, it’s not necessarily what’s said.
This is profound. Most organizations get this wrong.
This does not necessarily mean saying “yes” to exactly what’s being demanded. It sometimes means “getting to yes” by way of a negotiation, where the end result is the customer (or colleague) feeling that they’ve been dealt with fairly, and goes away ready to think (and even speak) well of the interaction, and of the result.
Has anyone here ever NOT bought anything from eBay or Amazon? Does anyone here use Yelp?
Would you buy from an eBay seller with a three-star rating? Would you eat at a restaurant that had two-star rating on Yelp?
What if, like someone selling on eBay, you received a rating for every interaction you had with someone over the course of a day here? And by “someone” once again I mean customer OR colleague?
What’s would your overall rating be, based on last calendar year, do you think?
If someone has to follow-up with you when they’ve asked for something, you’ve failed. If they’re following up with you within what you feel is an unreasonable time, you still failed, this time in establishing and managing their expectations.
Imagine the difference
Asker: “Where is that thing we talked about?”
Giver: “I sent you that thing we talked about, do you have any questions?” OR
Giver: “I haven’t yet sent you that thing we talked about, but I haven’t forgotten. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
And no blind transfers. If you can’t solve a problem, you escalate it to someone who can. Voicemail, by the way, can’t solve a problem!
I often use Bell as a whipping boy, but in a way, what you can say about them is that you always end up in the hands of someone who can solve your problem, and you never end up in someone’s voicemail.