You could win big by making your customers problems your problems.

“That’s not my problem!” we’ve all heard the line at some point in our lifetimes. It’s one that I have been frustrated by many times. When this most perturbs me is as a customer. My reaction is to make a mental note to never work with or return to the business. I am sure all of you reading this have had a similar experience at some point.

What’s this have to do with making it easy to do business with you? Well I am going to push you today to think about making your customers problems your problems. Probably seems like an obvious and simple thing, but from experience is hard to do. The best suppliers I have worked with are the ones that take the time to continuously learn what problems my business is facing. They focus on going deep vs. wide. This understanding applies to anyone who engages with customers. It is not the role of only the customer facing teams.

I’ll give you 3 reasons why I believe this approach will help you grow your business and a few ideas on how to approach each. These reasons are just scratching the surface of how deep you could go so if you’d like more detail in a specific area or areas, let me know in the comments and I’ll address it in a reply or a future blog post.

1. Take the time.

Taking the time to learn your customers problem(s) will help you identify opportunities that could help you grow your business, identify the next innovative idea your company may develop, build a stronger relationship with the customer or all of the above. Again, this seems like a no brainer, as most would expect this of any supplier & customer relationship. I’ve witnessed several relationships damaged or terminated due to a lack of a strong understanding of the problems faced by the customer. For example; a supplier quality issue that hampered a production facility lingered for several weeks as we tried to educate the supplier of the impact of their product failures. Our production costs increased and our staff was spread very thin to support demand and maintain our quality due to this supplier issue. Had the supplier been proactive in understanding this earlier, the negative impression, cost and relationship impacts could have been avoided. How could this have been avoided? Consider asking your self some of these questions.

? Do you understand where your customer uses your product(s)? Why is your product critical to their end product/service? Are you as a supplier being categorized or tiered in some way? Why, and how does that process work?

? What are the customers acceptance specifications for your product? Are these documented? Do you have a copy? Why not? Is there a specification change process or frequency? Could you influence the process early to make it easier for you?

? What is the protocol if an issue is discovered? Is there a defined escalation process with names, roles and times? How quickly are you engaged? Does the customer have documentation to understand what they need to collect and send to you for analysis? Does the customer know who should be engaged from your team?

? What other issue or issues is the customer dealing with on a regular frequency? Could this be something you can help address through your product or a future product? Is this an opportunity to help your customer and expand your network?

? How well does the customer feedback loop work for you? Does one exist and is it defined? Can you lead here and create a defined loop and make it easy for your customer? If it doesn’t work can you suggest improvements that will help the customer?

These are just a few questions to ask to help you get started, as you peel back the onion, the better you’ll be prepared to handle the situations that arise, support your customer and change the relationship from transactional to strategic. Customer management information should be well documented and understood by all your staff so they are aware of those signals that are very important to listen to when it comes to understanding the needs of the customer. The goal being an aligned and cohesive engagement and support strategy across your organization regardless of whom the customer is speaking with.

To continue reading the complete article including the 2 other recommendations I suggest, please visit the link on my blog at: https://www.theawardsolution.com/dig-deeper-and-win-big/ . If you have any feedback, questions or future article suggestions let me know. I'd love to hear from you.