Customer Success: Learning from the Masters

I’ve spent the better part of 30 years practicing the art of drumming. It’s my golf, my dance, my martial art and my longest running romance. Like any great discipline, drumming includes those individuals who are recognized by their peers as being true masters. These people have devoted a good part of their lives to the study and practice of their art form and have much to teach the rest of us.

While surfing through some music videos this last week, I was reminded of three lessons I was first introduced to through music, that now play a role in how I define the customer experience.

First, master artisans make the difficult look deceptively easy. I’ve heard drummers describe brush work as being like trying to push a bus with a rope. Brushes are, for many drummers, nearly impossible to play with; they are the anti-drumstick in many ways. Yet in the hands of a master artisan they become an amazing tool of rhythm, look “easy” to use and can be fun to watch.

Second, master artisans speak softly and with amazing intensity and clarity. It’s not how many notes the master musician plays, but the way she plays them. It’s not how loud or fast she plays, but how much she speaks to the music.

It has also been my experience that the true masters understand both the power of the whisper, and the word unspoken. They are masters of both what we need to hear, and what to leave to the imagination of the listener; masters of sound and silence.

When you’ve got information other people really want to hear, you can whisper it and it will be heard around the globe. If you find you have to scream at your clients to get your message across, then maybe you haven’t found the right message. Or perhaps you could speak louder and with more clarity by saying nothing at all.

When we’re designing our customer experience, I think we would do well to take a lesson from the master artisans.

1. Make what we’re doing look easy.
2. Carefully craft the information we share with our customers.
3. Use silence to our advantage.

Make what we’re doing look easy.

I made the mistake recently of showing a customer a half-coded web page. Even though I told him ahead of time that this was a half-coded page, and that only parts of it would be working, during the demo the client began to sound noticeably worried that his website might not work like he expected.

By showing the half-coded page, with some functionality not yet working, I exposed the customer to the complexity of the project. While I’m comfortable with nonworking functionality at the halfway point of the development process, the customer wasn’t, and he let me know this by spending 15 minutes telling me everything that was wrong with the page. I failed to make what I was doing for him look easy.

When what we’re doing doesn’t look easy, our customers may get a little anxious and this can make it difficult for them to hear us saying, “it’s only half done, it’s not all working yet.” Next time I’ll show this client static screen shots, and try to remember that what now looks easy to me might look complex to my client.

Carefully craft the information we share with our customers.

While I would never want to leave a customer wondering what’s going on with his project, I do tend to limit the details he needs to keep track of. Instead of letting a customer know I sliced all the artwork, compressed the layers for the web, set up the main templates and coded 150 lines of CSS for his site today, I might just let him know that that we’re now 20 percent complete, and have 80 percent to go before launch; we’re right on schedule.

If the person I’m working with on the project also works in the web industry, then I would include more technical details in our communications, but I’ll still pick and choose what information to share.

I must be respectful of people’s time and not overwhelm them with information they don’t need. Then when they need to focus on certain details of the project, they can be more attentive. I sometimes think of this as a whisper, in that a whisper is typically used to convey some pretty important information that’s intended for a small focused audience.

There will be project information suitable for broadcast, but the most important information should be presented differently, so that our customer leans forward and listens attentively, as if we are whispering.

Use silence to our advantage.

Silence is a great tool. You can use it to listen, to prepare people for new information, to build anticipation, to get the customer’s attention before you share really important information, and even to allow time for reflection. You can also use it to give your customer time to learn a new skill. Have you ever received an email from someone asking for your help with something, then minutes later she sends a follow-up email saying, “Never Mind!” She solved it herself. This is the beauty and power of silence at work for you.

If you’re having a difficult time making the jump from music performance to customer relations, consider the experience of a really great waiter at an upscale restaurant. The best waiters always make their job look easy. They don’t take notes, yet they get everyone’s order right. They balance full glasses of water on a small tray in one hand, while pouring coffee with the other, and they manage your whole dining experience with great ease.

They tell you about the menu, what’s in each dish, yet they only go into great detail about the preparation of the meal if asked. They also will give you information as needed, not all at once.

Finally, a good waiter uses silence within his conversation with you in ways that give you time to think, savor that first sip of wine, and make appropriate decisions about your meal.

May I tempt you with our dessert menu?