Do You Have A Process?

Do you have a process? We did not (but do now).

We recently almost lost a prospective customer whom we worked with for some time.

So what happened? In performing a Failure Analysis, we found:

- We did not have a clear process for working with remote clients. The majority of our business is transacted face-to-face within the Austin area and our processes and systems are refined for this environment.
- We relied upon email to convey our requirements. As we did not have easy direct contact, we instead added extraordinary detail to email communications to ensure all requirements would be met.
- Our client was too busy to read our chatty, multi-paragraph emails in the detail required to comply with our documentation requests and instead responded incompletely or not at all - leading to another (and another) follow up email request and extending the time required to initiate their services.

In short, we advertise Customer Service as a strong selling point for our business - but we failed to serve the customer! Only through his extraordinary patience were we finally able to bring his company online.

Solution:

- Institute a simple, clear checklist for document submission.
- Any incomplete requirements/missing documents should be followed up with a simple clear phone call that references the checklist.

Lack of a clear, concise process for working with out-of-state clients nearly cost us a customer. However, it helped us to identify an area for improvement, and in the end we need both improvement and new customers.