Client delight is a magic mantra to secure and sustain business and revenue across any business domains. At the end of it all, earnings from clients lead to realisation of grown, diversification, new business lines anywhere. However very few of us are born with the mindset needed to create a real ‘delight’ impact. The reality in the current world that we live in is that a client delight mindset really sets you apart from your colleagues and any other professional. Market magic is the dream of the business world and however qualified you are, your aptitude or attitude- none of these matter unless your client is happy and continues to be happy.
This is true of the business of product marketing but truer in the field of professional services. When I attended a residential course in managing professional services with Harvard Business School, my first day learning made me wake up and smell the coffee. The professor made client delight so simple in professional services by saying that in professional services, the leader has two distinct and simultaneous roles. One, he manages his team’s performance with excellence, second, he manages his own professional services which he is expected to deliver with a greater degree of excellence!
Here are some simple and practical ways that will enable your evolution into the client delight mindset
Increase your depth of comprehension
It seems very easy for us to understand what our clients expect. This is where the alignment can go awry. We need to drastically improve our listening skills and listen to understand, not just listen to reply. Its important indeed to read the client brief, map their competition, seek client perceptions etc, but there is a trick of the trade to frame your deliveries for client delight. This comes from conversations and deliberations. When the CEO of the company speaks with you and if you listen carefully, you can clearly gauge expectations and the CEO’s expectations. Once you connect with him as an enthusiastic, genuine, professional problem solver and speak his language, you will find that indirectly he will let out his business problems and pain points. But to get here, you will really need to increase your depth of comprehension and go beyond what he is speaking, read his body language and expressions. Keep constant eye contact and leave the notes to the juniors in the team.
Start with the bigger picture at the forefront
To really develop a true and spontaneous client delight mindset, avoid the trap of the big picture myopia and disconnect. Don’t let your assignment brief or what you are told to do limit you. That demotes your contribution from a cause completion mission to task completion professional. Start with the big picture and list down as many questions that you may have. Why is the product being introduced in the market? Why is the service provider introducing a new service. Who are the target consumers? What are their demographics and psychographics? Find out yourself or ask questions. The bigger picture will give you relevance for the actions you take as what you do then is a complete 360-degree tactic. Expectation matches will surely improve.
Take care of small things…then, big things will take care of themselves
Usually, strategy creation is a careful and lengthy process as strategy hinges on logic and takes care of multiple factors that include market realities, preferences, competition etc. If you come to look at it, by the time strategy materialises into action there is a question in everyone’s mind ‘Have the assumptions and postulates changed?’. In today’s VUCA world change is rapid but constant. As long as you believe in strategic execution, your door to sustained client delight always remains open. Those days are gone when organisations created annual strategy to review at the end of the now. We truly live in the here and now earth!
“Its no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them’ Phillip Kotler
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