4 tips on managing the "reality gap"

Anyone who has ever worked in a customer or client facing role will have faced many, many challenges. Dealing with customers is a calling, not a career choice made by most. For the most part, people who chose to be in a customer facing role want to help, and are adept at using their soft skills to navigate through tricky situations to stability and calm waters. Sometimes issues are created by customers' unrealistic expectations, other times by aggressive competition and quite often due to internal business failing. But one of the trickiest scenarios faced by your customer facing team is managing the reality gap between what your business claims and your real business capabilities are. 

Businesses don't ordinarily start out with the intention of deceiving customers, but sometimes a pushy customer, an overly aggressive deadline, an uninformed colleague opinion shared with a customer or a threat of business lost can result in a gap starting to open up between what you know your current products and services can deliver and the customer understanding of what they are paying for - this is the reality gap. Left unchecked, it can create increased customer dissatisfaction, internal conflict between departments and unnecessary strain on commercial relationships. So what can you do about this scenario? Here are my four tips.

Where does the gap exist? In the school yard, we used to play a game, where one person would whisper something to the person next to them. Whatever that person heard (be it correct or not), they would then whisper what they thought they heard to the next person. This would carry on till you got to the end of the line. After 6, 7, 8 or 9 different people had whispered a message, with each person slightly missing or misunderstanding what had been whispered, "Mrs Green is off to the market" ended up as "My lawn is covered in carpet"! It was fun as kids, but in effect, the flow of casual conversation inside and outside your organisation can replicate this scenario. 

Engineering to Product to Success to Sales to customer - there are a fair few steps that exist. So unpicking any gap, and working back through the communication flow is the important first step in reducing your reality gap. Whether it was an overly eager business development colleague who casually mentioned a new feature was already available, or a customer success manager who confused two different technical solutions to present inaccurate information, the reality gap will have started out from best intentions.  

Which area is driving the gap? If you find that you have a widely circulated reality gap, or if you find that you've got more than one reality gap, then the chances are that one particular department or team might be driving the misinformation. It's not just a case of overselling ability, I've worked in technical organisation who intentionally downplayed capability in order to reduce effort or time expended on customers. 

Once you understand if the reality gap is being driven by specific business areas, you can then work out why this is happening and how you might start to stem the misinformation flow. Is it training, better communication, connecting up two function heads to thrash out common ground or simply scripting messaging that is shared externally, fixing the internal drivers of a reality gap don't take a lot of effort. That said, buy-in and team spirit can stall efforts to improve the situation, so fixing this matter is as much about HOW you do it and WHAT you do.

How much risk does the gap pose? Once you've stemmed the misinformation flow internally, then comes the riskier part - to fix the reality gap externally. In the worst case scenario, not only is there a reality gap between you and your customers, but potentially out there in the marketplace, and thus threatening prospect relationships and future business opportunities. It's important to make a balanced assessment of the reality gap and the risks it poses, avoiding flippancy or the assumption that "it's no big deal."

Is the gap sufficiently defined to put a financial value against it - for example, you support A, B & C languages when in fact you only support languages B & C, and thus any business associated with language A is at risk. Is this more about reputation in the marketplace - where boasting about functionality that has yet to be developed could get you labelled as a business who can't deliver on promises. Keep calm and get a solid understanding of the risks associated with your reality gap before you start to take action to close the gap.

How to start reducing the gap? It's important to keep any reality gap in perspective - sometimes (and I'll admit I can amongst this group) customer facing people can worry unnecessarily. It's in our nature to fret and seek out risk and danger. So balancing the reality gap with probable outcome is important. That said, whenever a customer expects more of you than you can deliver, reputational and financial risk exist. In assessing how to close off the reality gap, it might be as simple as an open and honest conversation with key accounts. There may be a need for a goodwill gesture to resolve the matter, or even a revision in the terms or scope of service. But taking action to address the reality gap, and not waiting until it's time for contract renewal is most certainly the best course of action. Leaving the discussion until renewal time puts you on the back for, with little negotiation leeway and increased risk of revenue loss.

To really close a reality gap, engage all areas who are customer facing, to maximise awareness and engagement, and come up with the best plan forward. It's a frustration that most businesses face at some point with customers, but it's certainly not the end of the world. Taking action sooner rather than later mitigates any risk and let's your team get back to focusing on what matters - healthy customer relationships deliver business value!