Leaders, Foresee & Reduce The Burden of Needy Customers
by Kate Nasser | 6 Comments »
The Customer Experience ViewMaster!
Leaders, if your teams were to read this caption — Leaders, Foresee & Reduce the Burden of Needy Customers — whose burden would they think of? Theirs or the customers?
The answer will show you the state of your current customer experience culture. If they think of the customers’ burden, you are in a good zone. If they think of their own burden first, you have miles to go in building a super customer experience culture.
Foreseeing & Reducing The Burden of Needy Customers
Image by: AndyMiah via Creative Commons License
Customer Experience Culture
Needy customers are the only type of customers!
Un-needy prospects are of little value to our organization.
If they don’t need our products and services, they don’t need us.
It’s time to build your team’s desire to foresee and reduce the customers’ burden.
Help them to see the burden of uncertainty that every customer bears and how they can reduce it!
The 21 Customer Burdens (of Uncertainty)
- Can I trust this company with my needs?
- Will they fully understand my needs?
- Do they care about my needs?
- How well do they work together or will I have to run between them to get what I want?
- Will I understand them and how to easily use their product/service?
- How well will they deliver on my needs?
- Will they treat me well — even when it doesn’t serve their profits?
- How much will their mistakes cost me? In time, money, reputation, lost revenue?
- What positive effect will they have on my life or business?
- How easy will it be to use their product or service?
- What if we disagree? How will they handle it?
- Will the interaction be stressful or positive?
- Are they capable of giving me a super customer experience?
- What assumptions are they making? What do the expect of me?
- What don’t they care about — despite their promises?
- How will they treat me after the sale?
- Will I regret picking their product or service?
- What happens to me if I do regret picking them?
- How will a bad decision impact my career, my life, my business, my customers?
- Will I like their product, service, and dealing with them?
- Should I trust this company?
The customers’ burden of uncertainty takes them away from you.
Take the burden of uncertainty away from them and build your success with their trust in you.
When I go into companies to build a super customer experience culture, I often see that the leaders are aware of these customer burdens – the teams aren’t.
Teach every team in your company to foresee these burdens and reduce them through product and service design, positive selling and trust-based customer service.
It delivers a super customer experience with great success and best results for your business.
Is there a #22 for the list above? What other customer burdens will you reduce?
From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™
Related Post: Super Customer Experience: Be Plentiful & Ready
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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
Kate,
Here’s a 22 or three for you to ponder:
– Where am I (customer) in your (company) process?
Explanation: What kind of transparency does your company provide a customer as to where they are in a queue?, is their issue is being worked?, how long will this take?, is this channel better/worse than another?, etc…
– Am I or my issue a priority to you?
– How much work am I going to have to put in for you to solve my issue? (pay for shipping, go to post office, wait 3 hours for an email, correct on my end vs. company end, etc…)
Mike
Kate,
Thanks for your continuous creativity.
I always rely on this formula when dealing with customers:
Willingness to buy = Value – Cost
The burden you explained comes under the cost factor.
If the customer can sense the value of the product and the buying process, the customer will be willing to buy the product regardless of the burden or the cost involved!
Regards,
Khalid
I don’t know if I have any additions to the list, but I can make an observation. Customers often don’t think about this list until you give them something to be uncertain about. Many people engage in the buying process with optimism or at least a neutral state of mind until something happens to change that.
Here’s an example: When people valet their car, they rarely think twice about the valets as they pull up and hand over the keys. However, when it comes time to retrieve the car, many customers will start feeling uncertainty if they have a few minutes to wait and think about it.
Hello Kate. Once again a very thought provoking list! I would add: What is this company’s REPUTATION for fairness, wow experiences, value, etc…..Armed with information customers will look for what peers and friends are saying and make buying decisions based on that!