Listen to Your Customers
Customer satisfaction goes beyond meeting our own ideas of service delivery—it’s about genuinely understanding what our customers value. This came to the forefront during a recent car-buying experience, highlighting the universal nature of the principle.
Recently, and for the first time in many years, I had to endure the car dealership purchasing experience. There are exactly two car dealers within any reasonable driving distance of where I live, and one of them was a brand that I happen to own and had a good experience with. The first thing I said to the salesperson at the dealerhsip was that I cared primarily about the reliability of the service center and the fact that if I purchased a vehicle from their brand, I would not need to drive one hour plus for any maintenance needs.
In that moment, what the salesperson should have done was stand up walk me over to the service department, introduce me to the maintenance manager, and ensure I was fully satisfied with their service process, offerings, and levels.
The pitch should have been about the service, because that was what I said I valued.
Instead, he continued to talk me through all the really cool features of a Chevy Traverse. (Beyond “drives in snow” and “pairs with iPhone,” I really didn’t care).
This experience mirrors a common pitfall in professional services. As service providers, we often focus on what costs us money, where we dedicate our project efforts, and what we believe constitutes our greatest value-add. We forget that our clients rarely care about the realities of our business at the expense of their own.
It’s a salient lesson: listen to your customers. It’s not a hard thing to say, though far more challenging to do in reality.