Envisioning Success

Don’t Overwhelm Your Customers

Posted by Chris Shockley under General

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll remember interactions with customers where you gave them all the information they could possibly “need” and yet they walked away. How could THAT happen, I gave them every detail, every possible angle was covered, no one else could have given them better information.

So, what happened?

Well, chances are you never explained why the information was important (if it even truly was) in a way that the customer could really latch onto it, or you just overwhelmed them with so much that you kind of killed off their ability to process it.

You are excited about your business, you love the technical stuff and know why it matters; you customer does not care.

Because you know the ins and outs of your business and have interacted with many customers, use that information to figure out better ways to explain things and better ways to understand what is being said and what you are trying to communicate. Just make sure you do it in such a way so that your customer does not feel stupid, and make sure you are not given out more than is needed. I’m not saying hide anything from them, just use your expertise to give out important information in a “benefit to them” format and not just throw everything you’ve got at them hoping that it’ll make a difference.

Here’s an example, I have a customer who came to me for a new business venture he’s starting. Essentially it’s a new division of his existing construction company. He needed a logo and a website. He doesn’t know anything about the technical inner workings of websites, domain names and website hosting or image formats or how search engine optimization functions. He just wants the website to work, and knows he’ll need signs for his truck and t-shirts for his crews and all the rest.

By listening to what he’s asking for, I was able to speak in simple terms, technically speaking, and focus on the results; benefit and deliverables. EG: Because he’s paying me to create his logo, I will give me a set of graphic files that he can take to his t-shirt guy, sign guy, etc as needed. I did not tell him about vector graphics versus raster or any of that. I just told him, “Your guys should be able to find something on there and if not, have them call me”. Bam, now he knows the benefit; I’ll take care of him!

He does not care like I do about these things, he cares about having the marketing and advertising materials that HIS business needs.

Even if you really think a customer should want to know something first make sure that it really matters in the interaction. If it’s something truly beneficial to the customer, by all means; that is your customer service proposition. But, if it’s just something cool to know or something you’re excited about that does not really have a direct benefit leave it out.

If you feel like you’re going to burst at the seams with all your excitement, you can always start a blog or newsletter.

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Chris Shockley is owner of Envision Design Solutions and has been building websites for over 12 years. He can be reached via the web: http://www.EnvisionDesignSolutions.com/