2 tips for avoiding customer disappointment
In my early days as a marketer, a small business owner reached out to me for help with social media posts.
We worked together for three to four months…loooonnnngg, frustrating months because we didn't get some important things clear up front.
Our arrangement went like this:
The owner would send me a voice memo, usually 45 seconds to two and a half minutes in length, about a recent client.
From those few, sketchy details, I was to use the StoryBrand framework to craft an engaging 350-word story that—I soon discovered—the owner expected to get hundreds of likes and dozens of comments and shares within the first two hours of being posted.
(I tried to patiently explain that there’s no sure-fire “formula” for going viral. Unless maybe your last name is Kardashian. I said that a host of factors determine a post’s reception— timing (i.e., when it's posted), perceived helpfulness or value of the content being shared, emotional power, relevancy, relatability—and the mysterious algorithm of the platform that determines who even sees the post.)
In the end, we parted ways...which is a nice way of saying this business owner abruptly ghosted me and left me with an unpaid invoice.
(Was I sad? Quite the opposite! In my previous job, we used to term such a departure "a blessed subtraction.")
What did I learn from this experience? Two things:
1. Create realistic expectations upfront with clients. My dad was a homebuilder. He used to tell homebuyers, “If you’re expecting a flawless house, I’m not your guy. There’s no such thing as a perfect construction project. But if you buy a home from me, I will do my best to fix whatever’s not right."
Dad knew that disappointment always stems from unmet expectations...that when you clarify what customers can reasonably expect from you, you can avoid much client discontent.
2. Insist on getting all the information you need to deliver a great product. The idea that I could create rich, engaging, heart-tugging posts from such short (and short-on-detail) voice memos was silly.
I should have required more. If I had, we both would have been less frustrated.
I remember the time a potential client got testy as I asked him a series of questions. "I'm simply trying to understand your business," I explained, "So that I can help customers understand it. If that frustrates you, we don't need to work together."
We didn't.
Here’s to clarity in all your customer interactions!