Business Development Specialist

How often have you bought an item, paid for a service, enrolled on a course or asked for help from a colleague and it was not what you expected.  How did it make you feel at the time, disappointed, angry, frustrated ….?

No more gaming for me!!

Let me give you an example, anyone who has an Xbox will know what I’m talking about when I say “the red rings of death”, all Xbox players cringe when they hear that statement, why, well for those of you out there who don’t waste days and days of their life playing games it quite frankly means your console has died.  When I bought my Xbox I hadn’t heard of this particular saying and having only had the console for a couple of months I decided I was having a Friday night of gaming after a long week at work, could you imagine the disappointment, then frustration and to top it off quite a lot of anger towards Xbox because I had a series of red lights flashing around the power butten (hence the red rings of death) and nothing was working with the console.  I had to wait 3 weeks before I received my console back from Xbox.  This is just a hardware failure I hear you say, could happen to anyone I hear you say, yes to both of these, but what was disappointing was Xbox knew there was a fault and did nothing proactively to remedy it, thus setting the expectation that everything was ok when quite frankly it wasn’t.  the problem was so bad they ended up extending the warranty from 1yr to 3yrs to ensure none of their customers were finacially dissapointed.

This is something as a Manager or Business Owner is completely within your control to ensure your client’s never experience.  When I talk about clients I’m talking both internal (people within your organisation) and external (people out with your organisation; customers and suppliers) clients whom either benefit from your services or help you provide your services.

Setting accurate expectations requires good communication and often planning, don’t promise to supply your widget to a customer tomorrow when you know your suppliers have a 2-3 day delivery time, this obviously will disappoint the customer when the widget doesn’t arrive but it will also frustrate the supplier when you make demands they can’t fulfil putting unnecessary strain on the relationship.

Here are a couple of pointers to ensure you and your colleagues set expectations to your clients realistically.

Internal Clients:

• Set quality control standards with your suppliers and negotiate warranty proceedures when things go wrong.
• Talk to your suppliers and discuss delivery times for goods and services.
• Ensure you know what information is required by your suppliers to ensure they deliver what’s required and on time.
• If you think your about to secure a larger order than normal, give your supplier a heads up they may need to order extra materials or dedicate more resources to fulfil the order which may in turn affect the delivery time to the customer.
• Ensure your colleagues are trained on the widget or service your providing, its features and benefits, warranties, support and it’s target market.

External Clients:

• Ask questions, interview the customer and establish their needs.
• Match the appropriate widget or service to the clients needs (not wants – I’ll discuss this in future blogs).
• Ensure the Client knows the limits of the widget and service.
• Does the widget or service require additional products to help achieve the client’s needs, if so make sure they are aware of any additional costs or delivery times?
• If you offer guarantees or support ensure the client knows the conditions and any limitations.

Remember a well informed client will lead to a higher degree of satisfaction which in turn will lead to a greater chance of the customer coming back in the future as well as them referring you to others.

If any of this is a concern to you please contact to discuss further or feel free to leave a comment.