Today's post is a quick reminder that for workers steeped in fast-paced, data-driven companies, it's crucial to stay connected to and continuously think about the actual people who are responsible for our having jobs in the first place - our customers.
It's easy to get stuck in a rut of problem-centered thinking (versus customer-centric thinking), where the path of least resistance is to reactively solve the problems placed in front of you, where their visibility implies urgency regardless of their importance.
The issue with being constantly engaging in problem-centric thinking is that we lose the ability to step back and refocus our attention on the bigger questions that need answering first. We become proficient at crunching numbers and finding solutions but may overlook the fundamental question: Why does this matter to our customers in the first place?
The best way to fight the bias toward problem-centric thinking and force a wider perspective is simple but not easy: get out of the office and talk to customers!
How many days have you spent away from your computer / desk in the last 30 days, having real conversations with those you serve?
No matter how rigorous your analysis of the impact of bad service on customer retention, nothing will capture the lesson as viscerally or forcefully as actually going to where your customers are and seeing the bad service, or being in the receiving end of it, yourself.
There's also the benefit of connecting the dots across different departments and colleagues. Getting out of the office to meet people across your organization, from front-line workers to back-end accountants will give you a perspective that a select few in the executive suite - or perhaps none at all - enjoy.
One other immediate benefit of talking directly with customers is that when it comes to communicating what you've found to those you work with, you'll have acquired a new superpower: if picture is worth a thousand words, a story of how real customers see your service is worth a thousand PowerPoint slides!
Maybe your work doesn't directly impact end-customers and there is a level of customers between you and the end user of your product or service. Perhaps you create reporting or analytics used by others in management. Even if talking to end-customers isn't relevant for you, make sure you're meeting with the "customers" of your products so you can see how they use them, what their pain points are, and what they wish they could do but can't yet.
Start slowly - see if you can talk with just one customer this month, and break out of the usual routine of putting out fires and responding to emails. It's likely that as you talk to more customers, you'll experience a fundamental shift in how you view your work and what makes it meaningful. This shift will make your prioritization of work much clearer (especially if there was no prioritization happening before other than the order of emails in your inbox), and the impact of your work significantly greater.
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