Customer Success & Failures

“Is there anything else we should discuss?”You’re just wrapping up what you think is a successful customer meeting. However, you have this bad feeling in your gut that is telling you that something isn’t right and you know it isn’t from your lunch. You start to recall other signs that may affirm this belief. You remember seeing a sarcastic remark from the customer in one of their recent support interactions and you know that their business may not be doing as well right now. Instead of inquiring into these items you say:“Ok, well if there isn’t anything else we can call it a meeting.”As you close out the meeting you know that you probably just made a terrible mistake. And just to make you feel bad, I can tell you that you probably did. You let them off easy. You didn’t dig into a potential problem. Even worse, you didn’t seize on an opportunity to deepen your client relationship.Poke the bearThe reason that many meetings end this way is that most people don’t like conflict. It makes us feel uncomfortable. We could get a response that we don’t like. What people don’t realize is that your customer is probably feeling that same level of discomfort and it’s easier for them to not share with you how they are really feeling. They are busy and are thinking about the next task or meeting. The problem is that feelings of discontent fester and if you aren’t the one that will poke the bear, the bear will eventually get fed up and you will have customers churning. There is gold in there - you just need to mine for itOne of my favorite authors on leadership, Patrick Lencioni, used the term “mining for conflict” as it relates to making internal meetings more interesting. The idea is to surface sensitive issues at meetings so that the people present can work through them together. While it’s not easy to have these conversations, people will be grateful that you cared enough about them to ask the hard questions. As a customer success professional, you can be a miner of conflict with your customers as well. It usually takes your customer relationship to another level as you are being more transparent and vulnerable with each other. I’ll go through some of the ways you can do this with your own customers.How to be a miner of conflictUncovering areas of conflict during meetings involves the following steps:* Establish trust. Before you jump into a challenging discussion, you should try to create an atmosphere where there is mutual trust. This can include using active listening techniques and being empathetic. Using “reflections” is a great way to do this. Before getting ready to rumble as Brené Brown likes to call it, you need to have a level of intimacy that will prevent your clients from trying to duck the hard-hitting questions that are flying their way.* Ask tough questions. You should come into meetings prepared with a few tough questions that will help you determine where you stand or will help to expose deep-rooted issues. For example, to test if a client will renew, ask them: “If your manager asked you if you would renew with us, how would you answer that?”. You should also have your radar up during the meeting and look for signs that your customer has more to say than they are letting on. Lastly, keep an eye out for facial expressions that show frustration.* Ask follow-up questions and dig in. Don’t let the client off the hook when they start to reveal their challenges. Ask follow-up questions when you are looking for additional details and dig in your claws. You can ask for specific examples and then schedule follow-up meetings if needed to better understand their issues. Try and get to the root problems rather than just focusing on what is above the ground. You also want to have clear next steps to address the problem. Most customer success professionals will find these steps challenging and shy away from them. My suggestion is that you role-play this to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. You can then use something like Gong to go over how you did on actual customer calls and determine if you had your hard hat on and were mining or you were just skimming the surface. Your challenge: Make your meetings more engaging and improve your client relationships at the same time by being a miner of conflict. Look for signs of frustration and come prepared with some tough questions. Poke the bear.Not subscribed? Get regular customer success tips to your inbox daily:PS: A little Neil Young for your day. Mine for that gold! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadhorenfeldt.substack.com

Picture this situation: Your meeting with a customer who you’ve known for a while. You get along with them fairly well but they can be challenging at times. You spend the first minute of the meeting catching up and of course talking about the weather. Finally, everyone on the Zoom arrives, people have figured out they need to go off mute and the meeting begins. Before you have a chance to go through the agenda your client asks for the floor. They spend the next few minutes ripping into you over an issue they are having. You are caught a bit off-guard here but to show that you are listening you start nodding your head as if to say that you understand their concerns. Instead of making things better, most customer success (CS) pros make this mistake which just turns a small fire into a massive inferno.Providing a solution won’t helpDuring these situations, most CS pros go into problem-solving mode as that is what they’ve been taught. They believe that their jobs are to solve problems. The challenge is that if you jump right into suggesting a solution after the customer has unloaded on you, you may not fully understand the whole issue and the customer may not care to hear your advice as they are still too angry.What you need to do in this situation is do whatever you can to hold yourself back from trying to solve their problem. Even if you know how to easily address the issue. Press pause and do the following for a higher chance that they will follow your instructions.Reflect before you deflectAfter the customer has completed telling you their issue the best approach is to use a technique called “reflection”. Very simply reflect back to the customer what they told you. For example, if the customer lets you know that the bugs in your product are causing them delays which are impacting how they run their business, relay this back to them. You can simply say “It seems that the bugs in our product are creating productivity issues for your team which is impacting the overall performance of your business.” That’s it. That simple reflection technique that many psychologists use (it’s from something called “motivational interviewing”) will start to improve the situation because you actively listen to the concerns of your client. Using this reflection approach shows that you understand their issue. Here’s the even better thing: if you didn’t relay back the information to the client correctly, it gives them the chance to correct you. That isn’t a bad thing. This gets you and the customer fully aligned on the issue which will now allow you to switch to solution mode. President Theodore Roosevelt famously said: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” When it comes to challenging customer conversations (and I have been part of many of these), don’t go to solution mode until you have demonstrated that you are truly hearing their concerns.Your challenge: Try out using the reflection technique with your customers. This may seem very foreign to you if you have never used it before. Practice doing this with your teammates and/or rewatch your calls (if you record them) to ensure that you are doing it properly and not just acknowledging what the customer just said. You can even use this technique with a friend or loved one (yes, it can save personal relationships too). Avoid going into solution mode by default and put on your empathy hat. Try out this technique on your next call and let me know how it goes. Be that person that your customers can trust and count on.Not subscribed? Get regular customer success tips to your inbox daily:And now, a little Bruno Mars - be the light for your customers! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadhorenfeldt.substack.com