Embrace the Bad News: Building Customer Partnerships and Learning from Disconnections

Name: Embrace the Bad News: Building Customer Partnerships and Learning from Disconnections
Uploaded: 2024-01-20T15:38:04+00:00
Duration: 50 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this brief dialogue, Speaker A advises that companies should actively seek out and disclose any negative developments—whether early after a product…

20 Jan 2024 · 1 min

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In this brief dialogue, Speaker A advises that companies should actively seek out and disclose any negative developments—whether early after a product launch or later during contract renewal—to customers. Rather than hoping issues go unnoticed, the recommendation is to bring them up first, listen to the customer's perspective, and use the conversation to strengthen partnership and gain insights. Speaker B wraps up by emphasizing that such practices are deeply tied to the organization’s culture, suggesting that a culture that values transparency and learning underpins effective customer relationships.

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So my piece of advice is really look for the bad news. You run towards the bad news. Whether it's early, when you just shipped the product, whether it's late, when you're renewing a big customer, you have to— the wrong thing to do is, you know there's some issue in some account, and then you show up in front of the customer, and you hope they're not going to bring it up. You know, hey, maybe with a bit of luck, we can get away with it. Actually, no, the first thing you do is you talk about it, you bring it up, and then you, you actually hear directly from the customer what they have to say about it. It actually goes a long way towards building the partnership, and it also helps you learn, you know, from this conversation with your customers.
Cool, thanks. Time to wrap it up here. So everything is— I mean, one thing that I take out as well is it's a lot about the culture.