As Client Success professionals, we are the first responders. We basically get dropped into chaotic situations and depend on sometimes emotional clients to accurately tell us what's wrong. As you can imagine, this isn't always a clean process. I have found the following method of Personal Growth a considerable help.
Separate Fact From Judgement > Verify > Set A System Of Accountability And Transparency > Confirm Resolution > Define Patterns > Be Proactive Here is an example of how this applies:
"Your platform is broken. I need this report ASAP!"
1) Personal Growth
The most important thing happens before those situations ever arise, and that is a continual pursuit of self-awareness, growth, and healing. The pressure feeling is from how we see the problem and how we see the problem triggers a feeling in us. Not everyone is like this, but sometimes I will look at issues through my lens of insecurity. These exact words aren't said, but seeing that note from the client makes me feel as if I'm being told and sincerely believe, "I am stupid," "I am unwanted," "I am a coward," etc. CONTINUALLY working and healing that area is critical to performing my best. A constant flow of coaching, mentorship, faith, books, meditation, etc. help with this. For me, personal coaching gave me the most significant breakthrough.
2) Separate Fact From Judgement
Facts are what a video camera would see. They hold no emotion and hold no opinion. Imagine a picture on the wall that has a white background, and in the center is a black circle. If I say a "picture with a black ball on the wall," the picture on the wall is a fact, but the black ball is an opinion. Someone else might say, "There's a picture of a solar eclipse" about the same photo. When people communicate facts to each other, opinions get weaved in. Everyone builds a way of seeing the world, feelings that are triggered by what they see, and a way to react to those feelings. Realizing this allows us to hear feedback but not take responsibility for how they respond or see the world. People deal with emotions in many different ways: Some bully, some are overly polite, some nag, some shut down, and more. Taking a moment to decipher the opinion from the facts will go a long way in helping to figure out the root issue and what actionable steps to take.
"Your platform is broken again!!! This is unacceptable. I need this report ASAP!"
FACTS:
- The client doesn't have a report.
- The system has not worked on three occasions in the past month
OPINIONS/JUDGEMENTS:
- Your platform is broken again!
- This is unacceptable
We also can get caught up in personal judgments. When I read an email, I might be thinking as I'm reading, "The client is angry. They need the data to do a task; they are frustrated and unhappy with us; they are under pressure and depending on us." These thoughts might be accurate, but it's possible they aren't. The fact is the client perceives a problem, and we received an email. "The system is broken again" is an opinion with different possible reasons. Perhaps it's their internet? Maybe they clicked the wrong button? They might have an incorrect expectation of how the product works. It can be dangerous, costly, and further complicate things to set your team to work on solutions of unverified issues and assessments.
3) Verify
Thanking the client for their communication with you is much more empowering than apologizing. There's nothing wrong with apologizing, but it has to be timed correctly and not overused. Something else that will help decipher fact from opinion is asking the client for a video or screenshot.
A simple response to the client would be:
"Thank you for letting us know about the issue ____. To verify, you tried doing X, Y, Z steps to generate the ___ report, and it didn't generate, correct? If so, can you please send a video of the steps you went through, the results you experienced, and give an example of the results you expected?
In the meantime, I will see if there is a workaround to get you this data. Is there any specific data within the report you need?"
4) Set Up A System Of Accountability And Transparency
Accountability is who will do what by when and who will you let know. Once we know what the facts are, we can start engineering a plan. You might not know an exact ETA but can still give updated and follow up with members of your team involved in solving the issue. Such an email would look like this:
"Thank you for clarifying (client). I have our team working on this issue and will send you an update every hour via email."
A note on transparency, the client doesn't care about your internal processes. They want to know the issue is on our radar. Sometimes, there's no progress, and it's time to update the client. In this case, you can follow up with your team internally and tell the client
"Hi (client), we are still looking into the root issue. I can confirm our engineers are aware of this, but as of right now, we do not have an ETA. I will update you in an hour."
5) Confirm Resolution
Upon the resolution, test it yourself first before telling the client. Testing helps you save face and will shorten the time to the resolution vs. depend on the client to test it initially. If you can confirm the resolution of the issue, have the client test on their end before closing the ticket. Doing this puts accountability on the client to bring full closure.
6) Re-visit Opinions And Define Patterns:
Once the time aspect is no longer a factor, we can revisit opinions and use those to be a better partner with the client.
In this example scenario, we can ask the client for feedback on what caused them to say this. For example
"Hi ___, thank you for confirming the resolution of the issue. We want to be a better partner for you moving forward, so I wanted to ask a few more questions:
- You mentioned this happened again. I let our engineers know that this happened on (date), (date) and today. Are there any other dates I'm missing you also experienced not being able to download the reports or were unable to use our platform?
- Are there any other areas you feel our platform is unreliable?
- Around the timing aspect of this issue, was this a one-off report you needed? Or is there a consistent time you must have this report delivered by?"
7) Be Proactive
Having conversations like this will create opportunities to be proactive in solving issues before they happen. For example
- When we see a problem happening consistently, we can show these patterns to the engineers so they can come up with a new solution to permanently address the problem
- Understanding the aspect of their job will allow me to see put in feature requests further educate them on our existing product to help make their job better using us
- Understanding the timeline can help me set safety nets in place. For example, if a report is needed every Wednesday by 9 am CT, I can have our team run the report the night before to assure no issues happen, and the data is on hand.
There are countless variables that are constantly changing, but following these procedures has helped me tremendously.
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