Episode #205: JUST ANSWER THE DANG QUESTION!

Today we look at the all-to-common dilemma of mismanaging customer questions. I once worked with an ex-TV news reporter, who actually created a company devoted to teaching the art of “question deflection.” In fact, this person did quite well. Why? Because there is an enormous corporate appetite for manipulating customer questions. Do we really think that customers like our clever, devious, and manipulative ways of managing their queries? Or, how about the recent trend to just “ghost” customer questions altogether? Do we really think these behaviors lead to a bounty of repeat and referral business? Join us as we look at a solid way to raise the bar on customer satisfaction. Come on folks…JUST ANSWER THE DANG QUESTION!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky . Let's guide to show.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Hello everybody and welcome to the Simple Biz 360 podcast. My name is Jeff Mason, I'm your host on this five minute adventure, and today we're going through a customer tunnel, right? So , uh, we're just excited you're here. We're , uh, you can find us at simple biz three sixty.com on 28 audio platforms, YouTube and Rumble tv. And today we're just kind of taking a look at the customer tunnel. That tunnel is the happy customer. That's where we all want to go. We want to take our customers into that tunnel so they have a great experience, they come back for more. They refer us to other people and , you know, through the business adventure that, that we , we call a transaction, customers ask us direct questions. So why is it so hard for us to answer those questions? Really? I mean, I , I've heard more and more business people talk about this recently and I was just involved in a situation the other day where it's just like, oh my gosh, we , we just can't get an answer to our question. And it really is. So I I'm wondering , uh, is it because we're poor listeners , uh, or we poor readers of questions? I don't, you know, are , are we poor managers? Uh , or is it just that we don't care as business people? Uh, are , are we setting up our companies to be company centric and not customer centric? Is this why we can't answer a direct question? Um, do we need more time to come up with an angle? Is it an angle that we're trying to posture? Um, maybe we don't have the answer right? Maybe we don't. Um , maybe the real answer that we do have is kind of ugly and we just don't want to tell 'em . Um, maybe we're afraid to tell the truth. Is that, is that what we're saddled with? Uh, or maybe we're just lazy and we don't wanna find the answers, don't wanna research the answers. Is it 'cause we're kind of a , a , you know, above this customer question, like, how dare they ask us? Or is it because the customer is just such a, you know, lower echelon of life that we just don't even really, you know, <laugh> , they asked a question, they don't deserve an answer, I'll service them the way I wanna service them . Is that the attitude? Is it kind of a, you know, a , a a , I don't know, a kind of a condescending attitude, if you will? I don't know what else to call it. Or is it just because we click and drag what we see the crazy politicians of our world doing? Right? You know, politicians love to avoid questions. They love to deflect questions, they love to reword questions so that they can reposition them as questions, they can answer, and they passed the buck. Hey, not my , don't ask me. It was the other guy, it was the previous administration. You know, it's not me. So whatever the reasons are , um, businesses continue to avoid answering the direct question. So if , if , if your business is like this and you find that, you know, you've got some customer complaints in your coffers that center around, Hey, I just can't get the answers to my questions from your company, then we invite you to again, put some guardrails up that keep your customer service , uh, entities on the road to taking a customer into that tunnel. So just like you see the guardrails on this graphic behind us, we suggest that you install three simple guardrails. You hear us talk about it all the time, and it is the three y challenge. It's saying yes to respond to 100% of inquiries saying yes to follow up and yes to follow through . I can't emphasize this enough. I've, this must be the 15th time I've talked about this on our podcast, but we just see this continually to, to just not rear its ugly head. It the follow through or lack of follow through in business is absolutely stunning. It just doesn't happen. And it's where the breakdown occurs most of the time. So we just ask you if you're an owner, if you're an executive, if you're a manager, if you're a supervisor, look at your customer service network and examine it under the microscope of those three things. Are you getting back to people immediately? Are you telling them and building expectations in the follow up that that's meaningful to answering this direct question, right? And are you following through with the answer eventually? People don't wanna be just hung out to drive forever and ever. So we leave you with this thought just to kind of bake on this and, and, you know, accept the three y challenge. I mean, it'll, it'll change the trajectory of your business for sure overnight. In fact, if you're, if you're really one of these companies that don't , uh, like to answer customer questions. So we , uh, just invite you to listen to the lost in the shuffle track today. Another get the let out LED Zeppelin four when the levy breaks. And man, we are hoping the levee is breaking untruth in our world. We see it. Uh, you know, if you're listening to mainstream media, I would say don't anymore, because that is not where the levee is breaking the levee is breaking in the independent journal market. That's where the truth seems to be flow . So , uh, we invite you to , uh, join us in one week. We will see you in 168 hours .