The Voice of Your Client

When a client communicates their experience with you, with your team or with your organization, are you hearing their message and really listening?  What are they actually telling you?

When clients share their good experiences with your company and complimenting your team, it is always great to hear.  How do you react to the compliments?

Listen to what they are sharing with you.  Understand what sets you and your team apart. Is it the process, the people, the leader, the relationship, the experience in general or a combination that results in the client paying the compliment.

What if the message is neutral as in yes we had an OK experience with your Team?  How do you respond?  Asking questions to further understand what they liked and did not like and drilling down to understand what their expectations were will help to provide a better experience in the future.  Qualifying, understanding and setting expectations are all critical in setting the stage for repeat business, referrals and continued growth.

We dislike the negative and candid feedback.  How do you handle this?  These are the clients that care the most about your organization and are educating you to do better.  They want you to do better!  You probably do not believe this and kid yourself in saying "this does not happen to us".  That is OK and you can keep telling yourself this while great teams embrace it and take care of their clients.

Listen to the voice of the client.  We have heard the expression "there are three sides to every story: yours, mine and somewhere in between is the truth".  Here is golden nugget for you: reality is the perception of the client about their experience with your business and the proof is in the voice of the client.  Be very thankful if and when they communicate their voice to you.  The alternative of not communicating is leaving and moving on to build a relationship with someone else.

We are very fortunate our clients communicate with our team and we respond in a professional timely manner.  We welcome and embrace the voice of our clients to solidify our long term relationships and to create new opportunities from their referrals.  Thank you to our clients for sharing their voice and to The AlphaKORians' for listening and responding to the feedback to keep striving for excellence.

What are you hearing when you listen to the voice of your client?

(Originally published on 11.28.18)