I’ve owned and operated businesses for over 16 years, so I have a lot of data on the subject of customer satisfaction. Early in my career I was really close to the customer. I was selling the service and also delivering. I got to know my customers so well that I understood the subtle nuances of their personality, including what they valued from a service partnership. When some people got quiet, I knew they were just in a busy season and they would resurface like nothing was wrong. When others became quiet, that was a signal that they weren’t feeling valued.

I knew what drove their decision making. Some customers loved the latest tools, so they could show them off and be ahead of their peers. They would spend thousands on what looked good and use that as a marketing advantage when working with prospects. Others were more frugal and simply wanted the minimum viable solution, so they could spend in other places.

All this being said, my level of intuition when working with my customers was high. I developed an almost “sixth sense” when it came to customer sentiment.

As I have grown and my team has expanded into departments. I realized that customer sentiment is an art, and like any good artist, you have to be close to your work to create a masterpiece.

We recently uncovered an issue that has persisted for several weeks with one of our clients. We work with them closely on their IT maturity, which means we partner with their internal IT team. The issue isn’t our work, they are very satisfied with how we have supported them through big projects. The problem is their satisfaction with the tools we have deployed. Because we work so closely with them, we have deployed tools that are shared within the environment. Turns out, the internal team doesn’t like the tools.

Now, there are a variety of reasons that may be the case. Most likely it is a training issue, configuration (tuning) issue, or simply a matter of preference. Whatever the reason, we will identify it and solve the problem. The hurdle isn’t solving the problem, the hurdle was identifying there was a problem.

We have systems for getting feedback on tickets (discrete issues), projects, and general satisfaction. We have account managers, service managers, and weekly meetings with the client that address client issues. No complaints or suggestions were raised in these touch points. It wasn’t until we had an engineering working in their office for several months when the negative sentiment about our tools were uncovered.

And that’s the problem service based businesses face. Customers don’t always feel comfortable telling you their problems or preferences. They sometimes just let their frustrations build. Sometimes it’s just easier to blame the tool than to fight about it with a vendor. We only knew this problem, because we were close enough to the source that we observed the frustrations in real-time.

For CIO’s, it’s the same. You ascended to the c-suite because you were specially equipped to solve problems and manage a group of people towards a unified vision. The problem is, you don’t know the holes in your plan, because you’re not getting proper feedback. You need to have conversations with those people closest to the source, and if you don’t have that - you must figure out how to get closer.

I’m in the business of creating fans, not just clients, and certainly not just high satisfaction scores. After a decade of serving people, I have an intuition about customer behavior and sentiment that goes far beyond a spreadsheet. I look for that sweet spot where a customer feels like a friend. The only way I know how to create friends is to spend time with them listening and understanding their unique needs. It might not be a system that can be easily planned and deployed, but sometimes great things just need slow personal care.

Until next week,

—Jared

Text Me: 314.806.3912

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