Those Needy Customers!!

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

Hello. Hello, it is Experience Action. I'm Jeannie Walters. You're a Customer Experience Leader looking for answers, so let's go ahead and jump in.

H i Jeannie. Big fan. Thanks for all your insight and advice. For my organization, customer experience is really at the heart of what we do and what gets me up in the morning. But sometimes clients can be ******* needy. What advice would you give to providers who are trying to balance the needs of the client with the internal demands of competing priorities and cost and resource constraints? Thanks a lot.

My goodness was that the first bleep we've ever had on the Experience Action podcast, I believe it is. That's something to celebrate. Now, why did this caller get so emotional about the fact that clients are needy? I think we can all relate to this. When we're trying to deliver service for our customer, when we're providing products or helping them achieve a goal, it can be a lot and it can feel overwhelming, especially when they keep asking for more, when they are following up to find out where that order is, when they're telling you that this product isn't exactly what they expected, when they're looking for different options that maybe we don't offer. All of those things can lead to that sense that it's never enough for those highly demanding customers.

Now, yes, these customers are needy, but let's dig into why. [Why, why?] Because I totally can relate to this as a business owner, as somebody who is trying to deliver for clients while juggling all the many things that have to do with going into running a business. We all have so many important priorities at any point and many customer experience leaders have so many points of input. We have to please not just our immediate boss, but we have to make sure that we're delivering on customer experience for the entire organization. That is no small ask. [It's a lot.] So let's dive into this a little bit.

[Let's do this.]

When we talk about the common challenge that businesses face, it's really about balance. It's about balancing the needs of let's call them high maintenance or needy clients with those internal demands and limited resources. That is the reality of most of our situations. So when we look at how do we get things done, how do we make sure that we're delivering the right things for the customer Without necessarily going so far that we're losing money for the business or we're not meeting our objectives as an organization? That's the balance that we really have to look at. We want to really understand the importance of understanding that every single client matters. Every single customer is vital, but managing resources effectively is really the key to sustainable business growth. And while I say every customer is vital, some customers are more valuable than others when you're talking about dollars and cents. So we have to look at not just why is this one customer needy, but what does this mean for a whole organization. So, first of all, I would say do you understand why your clients are needy? Now, some of them just are. We've all had those clients. But I would also argue that there might be some patterns that if we address them proactively, we could avoid some of those needs popping up when they're asking us to react to them.

One example that comes up a lot is around communication and reassurance. When somebody places an order with your organization, if somebody is waiting for something, that comes with its own set of points of anxiety. We want to make sure that what we ordered is going to be as we expect it to be. We want to know when it will be delivered. We want to know that it will be cared for in that delivery process. We want to know that if there is a problem, we have a way to reach out. So if we don't proactively communicate all of those things to the customer as they're placing an order or, better yet, before they are, then those needs are going to bubble up as anxiety. So ask yourself, where are those needs actually showing up as anxiety? And I say anxiety with intention, because I think sometimes we expect things with clients and customers to be somewhat transactional. You pay me money, I deliver a service or a product for you. Easy.

But when we're dealing in the real world, usually what's happening is somebody is trying to do their job better, they're trying to achieve a goal, they're trying to feel a certain way, and so if they want to feel confident, if they want to look good in front of their boss, if they want to make sure that they get that part or that widget for their machine so that they can actually deliver their product faster and more efficiently, then anytime there's a question about will this arrive on time? Do I have what I need to install it easily? What if I need help? If they're asking those questions because they don't have the answers, those are points of anxiety. So look for those points in your customer's journey and see if you can proactively get in front of them. Send that email a day before they're going to ask that question and say hey, we know that you're probably on the lookout for your product. As we mentioned, it will take two to four weeks and we're going to let you know as soon as we have that information, letting them know that you are being proactive, you are looking out for them. That can alleviate a lot of that neediness that customers have. I would also say look for how you are showing up, no matter what.

This is why a customer experience mission statement can be so powerful, because if I show up a certain way for a client and they get assigned to a different account manager later and they show up a completely different way, meaning I might be prioritizing accuracy, I might be prioritizing details and calling them back again and again and saying I need to know this now, I need to know this, and the other person might have all of that stuff worked out in advance. They might say you know what, we got all this. If I have any questions, I'll let you know, but don't worry about it, it's in my hands. Maybe they're not as detail focused. The customer will feel that inconsistency. That can create that anxiety too. So, as we are looking for you know, what are the root causes, what is causing that neediness?

I also want to stress that it's important to have empathy and compassion for those customers. They are just trying to do certain things in their life and sometimes I think we forget this. We act like the customer journey is this very linear process and we act like our clients are really excited to call us when they have an issue. But we know that's not true. Our clients don't wake up excited to call us. Our customers don't think, oh great, I get to call customer service today. They're making those calls, they're looking for answers because they don't have them and so have that sense of curiosity about why is this happening, but then show up with that sense of empathy and tie it all back to your customer experience mission statement. Who are you to your customers, no matter what? What is the promise that you've made? Get really clear on that.

And then we also want to really focus on setting clear expectations. We want to discuss the importance with everybody in our organization around setting and communicating clear, realistic expectations with the clients from the very beginning. We also want to make sure that we have established some boundaries, that we have service level agreements, that we have descriptions about the guarantees we're making all of those things and that we're very clear on what those are and we're very transparent about that with the client. Sometimes neediness comes up because we're not being as visible as we should be. We're not showing things that we don't want the customer to see. We're hiding it in fine print in places like that. Let's be really clear about what the expectations are.

And then we want to make sure that we have a feedback loop. What's working, what's not for customers, what great ideas do they have? How can we help them feel heard and understood? That can help go a long way as well towards building trust in the relationship and when we really break it down, some neediness is really based on a lack of trust. [A-ha] I'm not sure you're going to deliver in the way that I expect, so I'm going to become very needy so you don't forget about me. Where are the places in your customer journey that you can actually build trust? If you find that there are certain places in your customer journey that very consistently have clients who are needy during those times, that is probably because there's been some erosion of trust along the way.

Look for places that you can proactively inject trust and communication so that clients know that we have not forgotten about them or neglected them. So you have set appropriate expectations. You understand your customer experience mission statement and so you know how to show up no matter what. You are collecting feedback from your clients and closing that loop with them, helping them feel heard and recognized, getting those great ideas from them about how you can be more proactive. And when I say you can be more proactive, of course it doesn't necessarily have to be a manual thing. Automation can be your friend here. Technology and tools can actually really help you be proactive in your customer's journey. So make sure that your project management software, your customer relationship manager all of those tools and technologies actually come together to help you build trust throughout that customer journey.

And then, finally, we want to empower our people to be proactive here to make sure that they are delivering and setting those expectations in a way that customers won't need to reach out. They won't require that reassurance quite as much because we're doing that proactively. So the best way to do that is to make sure that everyone in your organization understands your customer experience mission statement and your customer experience success statement. Why are we investing in customer experience? To create better business results. So if we know, if we're very clear on what that means, then that can help with prioritization as well. So if you feel this friction between your internal demands and your needier clients, look for ways you can be proactive in your journey. Look for ways that you can empower people within your organization and look for ways you can leverage tools and technology to be proactive to provide that reassurance so that your customers and clients don't feel neglected. Neediness is usually driven by anxiety because they're feeling neglected or overlooked or unheard. So address those points and you should hopefully have fewer needier clients and also understand where to put your priorities. So it can feel like everything is a priority in customer experience.

I encourage you to really think about this with a sense of curiosity. We named my business Experience Investigators because I believe that most of this work is around being curious. It's about investigating for what's the best way we can do this on behalf of our customers and our organization. That's the fun part. If we can approach it with that curiosity, with that empathy and with open-mindedness, then we can look for solutions that not only serve that one needy client but will serve our organization for the long term. I know this is a continuing balancing act and I know that day to day it can feel like you're pulled in a million directions.

So take a deep breath. You're doing okay, for clients are looking to you for reassurance because they believe in what you do. They've already signed up to be customers. They're your clients, so they are with you on this journey and we have to partner with them with a sense of empathy and understanding and compassion and curiosity. How cool is that? This was a great question. I'm so excited that we had our very first bleep and I hope that all of you got something out of this as well. We love your questions, don't forget. You can ask me whatever your heart desires, with bleeps or without, at askjeannie. vip. You can find many resources at experienceinvestigators. com and I cannot wait to hear your next question. Keep up the great work, everybody, and we'll talk next week. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience. Check out free resources at experienceinvestigators. com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.