Business

In Service To Our Clients

I experienced a moment of lucid learning today that’s well worth sharing. Hopefully, this will resonate with you, particularly if you work directly with customers and clients in a relationship-building capacity.

I have a client who is delightful in most ways, but is rarely specific in their requests. They sort of know what they want to achieve, but have a hard time communicating this with me. In the current case, they know they want a new website design for one of their events but that’s the extent of it. They know the design should be similar to the rest of their site but also different. This could mean nearly anything which is frustrating when trying to scope a project and understand their needs. What adds to the frustration is this lack of clarity (or at least lack of clarity in communication) is typical to how this client approaches our work together. It’s increasingly obvious that the client needs help in getting more detailed about what they want…which is leading up to the equally obvious trap of me knowing exactly what this client needs and how they need to do it.

In our project planning call today, I decided to take a stern approach with them. The overall tone of my voice was “look, it’s time for you to get your act together if you want this work done.” I didn’t say it exactly like that, but that was the vibe that I communicated. With some clients, I can take this approach and be okay, but for them it clearly wasn’t what they needed at the time. I later found out through my partner that I seemed ‘angry’ and ‘more hostile than usual.’ Yeah…big red flags.

Through this encounter, I recalled an important concept from my coaching training: each action should always be in service to the client. If you think about it, that’s actually a liberating idea. It opens up the opportunities for how we interact with our clients. If he or she needs to be encouraged and have their confidence fostered, then a coach can approach from this angle. And if he or she needs a loving kick in the rear, then that approach is also viable and honored as long as it is in service to the client and their ultimate needs. The danger is approaching as I did, which clearly did them no service. My actions actually diverted them from their overall objective.

So, what’s the learning?

1. Know the client and where they want to go.
Building the proper relationship with our clients is vital to a healthy, long-term partnership. There are no short cuts on this one. In order to help a client define and create their future, it means understanding what makes them unique, what fuels their purpose, what they most desire from your product or service.

For those who practice good client communication, that’s usually as far as they’ll go. Here’s the challenge: take it deeper. Actually make it a goal to know your client as an individual. Why do they work for themselves or their organization? What is it that personally drives them? What defines success for them? Knowing the answers to these questions is what separates the true partners from the service providers.

2. Match tone and approach to their purpose not our own.
This means putting our own personal preferences aside. If we’re getting ready to deliver a good stern lecture to a client who is waffling in their decision-making, we’d better be prepared to honestly ask if this is our preference or whether it’s truly in service to the client’s needs.

It also means setting our own emotional attachments aside. If a client’s indecision is driving us nuts, getting pissed off at them is not going to help them get where they need to go. That doesn’t mean their indecisiveness gets ignored…it’s still important to be open about it’s impact on their business objectives. We’re still trying to practice a caring partnership and that means sometimes addressing tough subjects. The key is to do it in a way that moves them toward their goals rather than farther away.

More Posts You Might Like...

• March 29, 2006 -- Can I Be Honest With You? (4)
• September 24, 2007 -- Connecting To Work That Matters (8)
• April 25, 2007 -- When A Boring Presentation Just Won’t Do (4)
• February 27, 2007 -- If Leadership Was A Punctuation Mark, What Would It Be? (4)
• February 21, 2007 -- More Ways To Cultivate Remarkable Customer Service (1)

© 2008 Bailey WorkPlay :: Work Experience Design.