General agreement with respect to developing competency in a single discipline is that it takes a decade. I have been lucky to be working in one single area for the past 12 years and I find that it takes significantly longer. That said I find myself thinking about what are some simple ideas that can make our jobs easier , because ultimately we are all directly or indirectly involved in Customer Service and continued customer success is what ensures continued success for all of us.
Here are some rules that I have learnt to play by as much as possible that have indeed helped me help my customers. These are by no means invented by me. It is acquired knowledge from my peers, bosses, customers and the bigger world.
Its Not about the product Its about the relationship — There is always going to be a better technology framework or better product that can do things better than the one you are making a living out of. So what is the real competitive advantage an enterprise system ? I have found that the most valuable asset in this eco-system is the customer relationship. Customer relationship directly influences how sticky the product is, its overall retention rate and how inviting the customer would be when you inevitably try to cross-sell or up-sell the customer.
How will that help the client — So what goes into making such enduring relationships, ask yourself — How will that help the client. It sounds trivial and cliched but these 6 words can make a world of difference in the complicated world of enterprise systems. As operations scale up it often happens that internal processes take precedence over the objective of job at hand. To beat this, for every update you do, for every email sent and every time speak up in a phone call ask yourself this question — “How will that help the client”. I have found this simple question can guide people to be more productive, helpful and create a positive experience all over spear of influence.
Some problems do not have logical solutions — Being Engineers at heart, we are trained to think about every problem in a logical and linear way. This is how we solve problems. This approach works almost 100% of time , notice the almost. There are situations that get ramped up, blown out or dragged on so much so that sometimes straight forward logical solutions will not assuage the situation. It is important to step back and think out of the box to identify the real underlying argument so that we can move things along.
Standardization Fallacy — In any medium to large enterprise there is always an attempt at improving productivity by means of standardization. It so happens that over a period time we tend to rely on relating every issue to these “standard” solutions that — the actual problem might be different and precious time is lost in establishing the connect. Since every business that is using the product is different, every situation can be potentially unique.
Lighthouse Accounts Matter — Businesses actually do not care about the technology prowess of the product. What business cares about is how is the product making the job easier, how is it saving Time and Money. That is the single test that an enterprise product has to pass. In this journey the key asset for any product company are those key or lighthouse accounts which try to push the envelope of the product. Don’t push them way with a canned response saying “we never designed it that way”. They are doing us all a favor by telling us what is it that they like to be improved.
Do not rely on one knowledge base — Complex enterprise products are essentially assemblies of various components. Yet, We tend to get into a tunnel vision of utilizing limited knowledge bases when troubleshooting problems . It is useful to expand the window of search starting from our own product’s documentation all the way to a simple google search. Amount of knowledge that is available for free in technology specific areas is just astounding and too valuable not to be leveraged.
Beware of Monkey Business — It is always a good thing to co-operate and collaborate within teams, since no one person can be an expert on everything. But it is essential to identify if someone is abusing this collaboration window. I call this monkey business. You are minding your own way, someone comes along and turns over the monkey on their back to you , leaving you to grapple with this new problem. I have seen these situations cascade into big problems where some people tend to feel that they are fighting multiple fires for no particular reason. Don’t take the monkey over in the first place.