Customers no longer accept excuses. Repeatedly, businesses blame partners, suppliers and agents when things go wrong. Instead you should own the problem and use it as an opportunity to grow the trust of your customers.
Opportunities are everywhere. At the start of the pandemic Time Doctor, a creator of a time-tracking application, was struggling to keep up with the demand of their clients. They treated this as an opportunity for them to develop their service for remote and hybrid work models. To handle the demand, they almost doubled the size of their team, by employing over 40 new employees remotely. The huge demand that easily could’ve overpowered them became a chance for their business to grow and for them to strengthen their relationship with their clients.
The Emotional Piggy Bank.™
It’s vital to build trust with your customers. It’s the insurance you will need when something goes wrong.
When a problem occurs, the customer’s confidence in you and your brand will be decreased. If you have enough trust build up they will be open to you solving the problem. If you do it right, the customers’ trust in your company will grow and you will discover the space for improvement.
To turn your problems into opportunities follow these steps:
Step 1: Examine the problem.
Define the problem in simple and clear words and think where the opportunity lies.
Once the problem is clearly defined check if there is an underlying issue. On the surface it may look like the sales have gone down because the price is too high. If you investigate it, you may find that there is a pain point in the Customer Journey that’s not letting your customers finish their purchase.
Remember, there can be many root causes of business problems like the lack of clear strategy, lack of staff training, lack of resources, ambiguous roles within the team or task overload.
Step 2: Here are the opportunities: Make the solution an improvement.
Solutions should be regarded as research into improvement.
List all the possible solutions. Include what steps you need to take to reach your goals. Some will be longer and more complicated, others will be simple. While you plan how to solve the problem you will identify performance gaps. In the long term it’s not feasible for any company to use quick fixes as solutions to their problems, as these problems may reappear later on again.
It’s highly possible that the overall investment in temporarily fixing a problem again and again will be far more expensive than taking your time and solving it properly from the beginning. By solving a problem through an improvement to your overall strategy or customer journey, you will improve the customer experience, which will have a direct impact on your ROI.
Step 3: Choose a feasible solution.
Choose a solution that is feasible to achieve your goals.
In the previous post I mentioned that balance must be kept in your CX Strategy. Choosing a solution that is feasible but provides room for improvement is key to changing a problem into an opportunity. Set out a plan but allow space for contingencies. Remember that depending on the size of the problem it may take a longer time to solve it. This is not the time to rush. It’s ok to use a temporary solution in the background, if you are working on an overall improvement to the process. However, don’t let it stay there forever.
Step 4: Analyse the process.
In almost all design or execution processes, once the given task is completed, we should analyse it. What went well? Where could we improve? What did we learn?
There is always room for improvement, and problems are a great way to spot it. Analysing the solution will help you identify if there are other problems in the customer journey that you could solve. You can’t do everything at once but if you know that certain issues exist, slowly you can improve your business.
The moral of the story
When a problem occurs in your company don’t let it overwhelm you. Examine the problem, see where the possibility for improvement lies and act on it rationally. Who knows, maybe you’ll save the world!
If you would like to learn more about how to turn problems into opportunities, enrol in our Professional Diploma or Certificate today.
