Busy Inside, Blind Outside

The Dangerous Comfort of Assumptions

Dear Leader

At the end of our strategy meeting the other day I asked a simple question. "What does the customer want?" The silence hung in the air for several seconds as everyone shifted uncomfortably in their seat. You broke the awkward silence by recounting a collection of long held assumptions. I let the moment pass, but it deserves a real answer.

I love that you have regular meetings to check up on your rocks and document progress. But no matter how good our internal communication is, we are still not talking with customers in an intentional way. We avoid the hard work of understanding our customers, choosing instead to draw on ten-year-old survey results and anecdote because "Who has the time?"

But I need you to resist the temptation to be busy with less challenging tasks. The most important thing we do as a business is to provide valuable benefit to a customer profitably. When we lose sight of that, we jeopardize our relevance and thereby our entire purpose.

As an example, I once worked with COBOL programmers. Some of those programmers remained steadfast in their language of choice because "COBOL does everything they need!" Slowly but surely, all of those COBOL programmers lost their jobs because they did not want to put in the effort to satisfy the customer's desire for newer languages.

Let's avoid the COBOL programmer fate in this business. Let's know our customer. Get out of the office and interview them face to face. No, not a survey, not an e-mail, person to person. Ask these two fundamental questions.

"What is the best thing about what we do for you?"

"What does our industry get seriously wrong?"

The first question is different for a prospect or would-be customer. It's more like "What concerns or hesitations come up for you when thinking about working with a company like ours?"

I can hear your pushback already. "I have so much to do, I can't possibly find the time for this!" My response is to read the letter I sent you in the beginning of March (titled "Overwhelmed") and act on it. As the President, what could be more important than how customers experience the company?

These specific questions are designed to reveal the two most important aspects of your customer's perception. First, we find out what they love about what we do. That in turn allows us to double down on the best aspect of our service. Imagine a client who loves the fact that we turn their projects around in one day consistently. Then imagine that client's response when we begin turning them around in 4 hours. That's right, Love becomes Love3.

Secondarily, we discover that irritation or undesirable aspect of our service which we can ensure never occurs in their experience with us. Imagine how we would stand apart from the rest of the industry. And, when you do this regularly and consistently, you will be keeping abreast of the customer's perspective; remaining valuable and relevant.

Lead this effort, it may be your highest value.

Park Wiker

P.S. "Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves." - Steve Jobs