The mistake that most customer success pros make

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 help

During 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 deflect

After 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.

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And now, a little Bruno Mars - be the light for your customers!

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