Sitting Ducks (in a customer’s boardroom)
We had poor quality performance with a major customer. We were faced with several failed units from the most important product line at the customer. Instead of holding a conference call to review the quality issue and our actions, the customer management invited us to visit them in person. Our preparation was limited, as we expected to have a brief conversation to share planned recovery actions. We ended up in an intimidating, massive board room with the largest table you can imagine. Two of us sat there at one end of the table with about 18 customer executives around the table asking for pin-pointed updates.
When we were unable to provide on-th e-spot answers, they literally locked us into an office to make the phone calls necessary to get the required information. Behind that locked door, we hurriedly called our colleagues in production and engineering to get answers to their questions. Once we had some information, the customer let us out to review it. We were able to better communicate our plans and get out of there alive!
The key in an urgent situation is to prepare thoroughly, anticipate the customer’s needs and concerns (both real and perceived), collect all of the needed information beforehand, and be ready to share a well-thought-out plan with people who might be quite emotional. You can learn the customer communication skills to calm a customer, show you are in control, and turn around problems toward a successful recovery. Don’t become a sitting duck!
Want to restore or maintain customer confidence even in the most challenging situations? CAEDENCE’s novel, realistic role-play based workshop “Keys to Effective Customer Influencing” (including companion book) is one of our most-requested offerings because it is so memorable and effective. Here’s what one engineering director had to say, "CAEDENCE Consulting brings a new perspective to training, leveraging years of experience into a relevant exercise combining technical and soft skills into a comprehensive package for a cross-functional engineering team. The impact is clear: my team is already much more effectively managing customers in a variety of challenging situations.“
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