Podcast Episode #16: Why Your Customer Conversations Might Suck

Hi and welcome to the Key Customer Growth Podcast. My name is Jermaine Edwards and I have become obsessed with customer behavior and how people and organizations win with their best customers long term. After starting, failing, and growing my own companies, 30 customer growth projects, hundreds of strategies, and the study of 50 years of customer service research, I've seen firsthand how and why organizations win, lose, and win again with their most important customers. This podcast is my way of sharing those insights, failures, principles, and strategies so you can become what I call an irreplaceable advisor, someone so valuable your customers never want to leave. In an increasingly competitive world, how do you continue to deliver unrivaled value and deepen those most important customer relationships? Join me as your customer growth guide. Your journey starts here.

Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide, and welcome to the Key Customer Growth Podcast. This is episode number 16, and today we're talking about why your customer conversations might suck today and what you can do about it. And I say that with all sincerity and, you know, without any kind of detriment to the great work you're probably doing with your customers already. But the reality here is this, is that we often overestimate the quality of and impact of our conversations in customer communication, and we really don't provide enough space to think about how impactful our communication is and what we can do to improve those things significantly, or what's actually missing, what's possible if we chose to be more intentional with our customer communication. So I guess the best question to start with here is, you know, how would you rate the quality and impact of your customer communication today, or your conversations? Now, I bet you probably give yourself maybe a reasonable score because, you know, you see some positive things taking place. But bear me out for a minute. Let me just give you kind of the scenario. Have you ever come out of a customer meeting believing you had communicated clearly one thing, but the next time you speak with a customer, they either haven't done it, didn't understand it, or misinterpreted it? Now, if you're like me, in any kind of sphere of communication, conversation in life, you've probably experienced that. And perhaps more often than you think, because oftentimes a customer will not communicate back that they haven't fully understood something or have misinterpreted, because we're often led by our own bias around our own interpretation of things that we hear and see. And so if your customer is misunderstanding something or misinterpreted something, that's on you, not them. And so we have to have a clear clarification system to ensure our conversation is really landing. So how How are we going to structure this kind of time together today? So let's think about this way. So what I'd like to do is explore why conversations can go wrong to start with, look at some principles around customer communication and conversation, and then give you some really conversational practice, maybe kind of take 2 or 3 of the 5 that I see most helpful often when working with teams and leaders in this particular area. So let's start with why customer conversation can go wrong. So I was given this particular phrase, I'm still unsure who said it exactly, some credit is given to the playwright George Bernard Shaw, but it could be somebody else, but the whole principle is this, it says, "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." 'Just because you say something doesn't mean they heard it, believe it, or will do it.' Now, I'll say that again. The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Just because you say something doesn't mean your customer heard it, believe it, or will do it. Now, this is really important because within every conversation that we have, we can often misinterpret signals from the customer. We hear phrases like, "Ah, yeah, of course," or, "Oh yeah, I understand what you mean," without really clarifying what exactly do they understand and how do we know. So we need to really get more specific and much more intentional about these areas. And looking at the research, we see that there are more than a dozen common communication fallacies that we make. And so I want to share with you just kind of 6 of the most interesting to me and a few I see discussed less often for reasons, you know, customer communication goes wrong or conversation. So one of the most prevalent is mind reading, making assumptions about what the other person is thinking. So we assume because we've said it that they've understood it, because they're nodding their head, we'll say, yeah, they really understand the this, or we omit information thinking that the customer really understands it already, we don't have to repeat it. Those are cardinal sins for communication, particularly with your customers. Or filtering, so we only focus in on specific points or reference points that are about our point of view, and we discount things that we hear from the customer. So, our own zoning out will prevent us from asking better questions, or at least paying more close attention to what a customer is saying. Another thing is matching. So hearing what your customer says and matching it to a scenario. So what we want to be able to do is not just match based on a scenario. Matching is, can be really helpful because we will hear what a customer says and we'll think of a case study and we'll try to apply a really great story for that. But what can often happen is that because we have such a repository repository of stories, we can begin to match things without thinking about context for the customer. And sometimes matching does not work as effectively and therefore doesn't land with a customer. Being unprepared really prevents you from having great conversations or more impactful conversations. So we can sometimes use familiarity with a customer for lack of preparation, but there is no excuse for lack of preparation because it ends up with no clear thought on what we intend to discuss. And, you know, despite leaving the room maybe with some interesting insights from a customer, we may not actually achieve the goals that we want or are helpful for our customer either. And often also making too many requests in a single conversation. So we can make a lot of requests in a single conversation, not weighing What is really needed for each of those requests for the actual customer? So what is the actual— what's actually needed for that customer to make a decision, or what kind of effort, energy, thinking is needed to make those things possible? If we're giving our customers way too much, it's likely they'll not do anything at all. So those are some areas that really prevent customer communication conversations from going correct or going right or having the most impact. Mind reading, filtering, timing is another thing, not being aware of the environment, matching, and being unprepared, making too many requests. Now, this is not an exhaustive list. There are many I'm sure you can come up with yourself, but if you were to think about even just those few, you'll probably find yourself doing 2 or 3 of those things without even knowing. So how do we bypass that? How do we become much more intentional and think more clearly about the kind of conversation we want to have? Well, it really begins with designing the customer conversation you want to experience and you want your customer to experience. Now, For me, a meaningful customer conversation is a conversation that contributes to moving a relationship and result forward for the customer, for you and the customer. So it contributes to moving a relationship and customer result forward. And so if that's the case, what do we need to consider in order to make that a reality? Well, there are some principles I want to share really briefly that might help us to think about this in a really pragmatic way. So number 1, is we don't wanna limit our customer conversations. So we want to really practice going deeper in almost every conversation that we have where that's possible. Explore values, beliefs, things that really shape and drive the worldview of our customer and their business. We also wanna become a great facilitator of ideas. So what we wanna be able to do is cultivate things that they say, challenge them, and help them create even better ones. And so when we hear a customer articulate particular ideas, share particular thoughts, beliefs, and suggestions. We want to really begin to help them cultivate that, understand where that's coming from, and help to shape that into a result that's undeniably beneficial to them. And we also want to leave the customer better than we found them. So that should be a principle in order to get a really meaningful conversation. The customer at the end feels better off— excuse me— better off And when they found you, then we can actually get to a place where you're building a brand for knowing how to really have great conversations. And how we do that is by thinking about what we want the customer to feel, know, understand, and do. The last principle here, uh, principle number 4, really is knowing that every conversation matters, even the mundane simple, non-important, non-specific ones, or seem non-specific to you, they are also very important. It's in those specific moments that seem mundane or ordinary, even to your customer, that you can make great and make yourself stand out. So I'm not saying this is easy because it takes a lot of thought and intention, but if you begin this, if you're willing to begin the process of just taking a little space to think about what you want to design as an experience for the customer and think about leaving them better off on the call, it will help to shape how you show up, how attentive you are to the customer, and the kind of value that you bring to the table. So let's talk about some practices, some ways in which you might have more meaningful conversations on a practical level. So make the conversation enjoyable. So when I say make the conversation enjoyable, I'm not talking about jokes or being overly positive or even, you know, bringing treats for them, although that at times might be helpful. What I'm talking about is regardless of the type of conversation you have, you should think about the conversation through a particular lens and Here's what it is. We want to make the conversation we have, what we say, easy to follow, understand, believe, and remember. Now, why is this so powerful in terms of making a conversation enjoyable? Well, if a conversation is easy to follow, easy to understand, easy to believe and remember, it means we're ensuring that the customer themselves is using less energy, less cognitive input in order to understand what what you're saying, then they're able to be more in flow, in more of a flow of conversation. The conversation becomes more easy. It becomes less arduous on them. It becomes much more engaging, much more connected with that person. And we can do this in very simple ways. So in order to make it easy to follow, you can use visuals. In order to make it easy to understand, you could use an acronym, something that supports that and that feeds into obviously the thing that helps them to remember. But to make it easy to believe, we can use appropriate evidence around things that we're sharing, whether that's a testimonial, a particular statistic that's from a reputable organization. It could be something that's personal to the person themselves, or if we are making it easy to remember for them, we can describe what the core idea is in a single sentence. Now that's real powerful communication. If you can communicate the exact thing you want to share with the customer in a single sentence, that's the point in which you're approaching real mastery there. But we can use, obviously, acronyms, ways in which we can describe things to help the customer. The easier it is for our customer in those conversations, the higher chance they'll take action. That's really important. Number 1, make the conversation enjoyable. Second is know what you want to say and why, which kind of feeds into that whole idea of, you know, making it easy to remember, knowing the one thing. But this may seem arbitrary, but I've mentioned this before, just earlier, that if we want to really know what we want to say, we need a framework to think about it. So here are the big ideas. What you want to do is think about what is it you want your customer to know, feel, understand, and do. So know, what is the big idea for the conversation? Feel, how would you like them to experience the conversation? Understand, what do you want them to take away from the conversation? And do, what would you like them to take action on as a result of the conversation. Really simple. Know, feel, understand, and do. If you can apply that just on every, almost every single conversation you have, even if you know a customer intimately, think about these 4 things, will make you more intentional. It may take more time at the beginning, but you will get faster as you build the habit and the intentionality with that. So know, feel, understand, and do. Know what you want to say and why. Then we have number 3, the type of conversation matters. So whether it's a negotiation, updates, casual conversations, it's important we understand the mode of communication that we're using to share specific ideas. There's a lot of hot debate in the way in which we can— we should communicate things with customers. And because we want to, you know, use multi-channels of communication, and we want customers to be much more self-serving and self-sufficient, in using our chat functionalities and using our FAQ forums, we forget what the best medium is for a particular kind of problem or kind of communication for a customer. So an example being, you know, in-person, virtual, telephone, digital. How do we make decisions around where that communication might go? Well, in-person, you might have, for example, if a message has complexity, and requires direct interaction from more than one person, one person or more. In-person is great for that, where there is complexity, where it needs interaction, engagement directly from more than one person. In-person could be fantastic for that. Or if the message is simple but requires a visual walkthrough, you could use virtual for that. You don't need to be in person to do that. Or if the message has layered nuance in meaning, but it you don't need to be in person to do that. You can be over the phone, or if the message is instructional only, maybe it's just facts, maybe it's specific steps, you can do that through a digital channel: email, chat, social, so forth. So really think about the mode of communication. What am I trying to communicate, and what is the best medium here that will allow me to eliminate any risk of misinterpretation. That's really important. The number 4 practice here is follow the thread. So great coaches do this, and great customer professionals too. Following the thread is going about going deeper into a particular customer area. So for example, if your client has mentioned a specific challenge at work a few times, simply ask, "Tell me more. How did you feel about that?" What were the steps that you took in that situation? All of a sudden, you'll open up a gate of brand new information and understanding of your client that you never knew before. And I definitely recommend a particular book by a guy named Michael Bungy called The Coaching Habit. It's a fantastic book for learning real basic coaching skills, but in a very pragmatic way. It has really powerful questions that you can walk through, 7 specific questions. So it's our responsibility to help our customers see what's most important in every conversation. So the ability to follow the thread, go deeper, and uncover some of these areas is really important. And you might want to go back to an episode around relational influence to find out more about that, and I'll put that into the show notes for you to click on there to go read and hear more. And so within that, we want to really begin to listen deeply, get curious, and shape and ask really great questions. That's really going to help us to follow that thread. The last piece here is pay attention to what's not being said. And there's an example, actually. A colleague of mine came with me to a meeting that was a really sensitive meeting. And I personally need a second person with a level head to help me see what I couldn't see. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. So the outcome in my mind is I wanted to ensure that the customer themselves knew that we were still the right partner of choice and felt supported and deeply cared for as a customer. And throughout the first 30 to 40 minutes of the meeting, it looked like we were heading in the right direction. However, my colleague had noticed that the CEO in the room was opening and closing his fist consistently for almost 10 minutes straight. It was really odd behavior, and it could have been anything, but it surprised me, and I went with my gut in the room, and I simply just named it. I said it out loud, and I said, "Hey, Bob." That wasn't his name, but we'll call him that anyway. For the last 10 minutes, you know, I've seen It seemed as if we'd been moving forward in a helpful way. But, you know, like you, we want the best for you and your team. And we noticed that your hand had been clenched for that entire time. And we don't want to assume you're, because you're a straight-talking guy, if we've missed anything that's important to you in this conversation. So we really opened that up. We talked to him, we shared that. And immediately he said, hey, I don't like anything that's been said. So we were shocked in the room because we've been going for 40 minutes. And so I said, hey, when 'When you say anything, can you give me one specific thing that you felt you disagreed with directly?' And he said, 'I want to be confident that we won't be at risk,' and we're talking about a particular project. And so we said, 'Okay, right. So let's walk through what risks you see, what we see, and close the gap.' And the moment we did that, the moment we noticed that area, we named it, and we began to walk through those specific areas. That he was most concerned with, it immediately alleviated the situation and he was ready to move forward. And that saved the relationship. So being able to pay attention to what's not being said is a truly important skill. So here's the big idea. Emotion drives attention and feelings show where that attention is going. But emotion leaks and can show up in different manifestations on a person's body. But if the customer has shared something of personal value to them, then it must be tied to an emotion or something of importance. So we must be aware of those things. All right. So what's next with all of this? So we've talked about why communication goes wrong. We've talked about some principles and we've looked at some practices that is there. I know we've gone through a lot. And so I've provided a link for you to really go through this in much more specific detail. And you can have a look at the blog to read that. That even further. But importantly, what's the one thing you can begin to do right now? Well, the first thing is to think about designing your conversations for the experience you actually want. Design the conversations for the experience you actually want. Look to pay attention to the things that's not said. If I can give you any one thing to look for and to be really clear on what you want to say and why. What do you want them to know, feel, understand, and do? If you can have those things, pay attention to what's not being said, know what you want to say and why, and design for the conversation experience you want in advance, you'll be on your way to having much more significantly impactful customer communication and conversations with every single customer you have. So, hope you've enjoyed that particular episode here, and obviously there's more resources more courses to come. I want to make sure I'm really supporting you in every endeavor to get the results that you want, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Key Customer Growth Podcast. Hope you enjoyed the episode and got some great value. If that has been your story today, please share, comment, and subscribe so we can reach more people with the message and impact them also. Most importantly, I want to hear your feedback on what you liked or what you would like to hear and see in the future. Look forward to hearing from you, and you can find all the show notes below. Wishing you success in becoming an irreplaceable advisor.