Vinod Kumar (Blog home)

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning – Bill Gates

Joining a role with Microsoft Technology Center and now as a Technical Architect, I get to learn from our customers almost every day. This is a great source of learning and I am still slowly but surely starting to get a feel for it. There has been tons and tons of learning’s and that cannot be discounted. One of the key things that I did learn is to listen with patience before jumping into solution. Get ALL the relevant information and then suggest a solution. I think this has been my #1 learning in the past ~ 1 year into my role.

Now these listening skills with some thought through precision questioning is key to proposing a complete solution to our customers / partners. Let me highlight some of my perspectives in this blog post.

Customers are always right

There is no exception to this rule. In fact, we need to be careful and sensitive to their feelings before jumping into a comment. Their real life situations and emotions (passion) with which they are expressing their experiences – these are REAL. We should have an unqualified, unconditional respect to their views – PERIOD.

Being non-judgmental in our perspective to their views is critical. Hence, giving the due credit and respecting their point of view is something we must handle with caution. More so being open and neutral in our Questioning will help a long way. Let me cite some examples later in this article to drive this concept home.

Customers necessarily don’t have to earn our respect, we have to earn their respect.

Be non-judgmental

Though most of the techniques are old and look like no brainer – trust me it is really hard to take a step back and look at the big picture especially when we are talking about Technology. But I have been gifted in many ways to learn these tricks from my good old friend (Govind Kanshi) and still learning some of these techniques every single day from him and many more from my team. Here are some practical examples of answering -

Caution: “That wouldn’t work. You should not have done it that way”

Better approach: “That is a common approach, but based on our understanding and best practices we should be able to achieve the same task faster using ABC technique. Like …”

Caution: “Are you sure you want to use it that way?”

Better approach: “In a performance testing environment, we have successfully implemented the same requirement is a slight different way like ….”

Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck… because they do.

Listen and probe

I don’t have to explain how listening is a key aspect of the job that I perform. By listening we are more keenly able to capture the context and the emotions attached to a specific comment rather than jumping into any conclusions. And in order to understand this perspective, it is critical to ask open-ended questions to get more insights to what a customer means.

Closed Question1: Do you xCopy your web files into the server?

Open Question: How do you do deployment of your websites today?

Closed Question2: Do you use VS2010 Debugger feature?

Open Question: What are the ways your team debugs code when application doesn’t work?

Sometimes these experiences are based on just word of mouth information that flows from grapevine conversations. Hence, we might sometimes need to get more specifics from customers when you see these hints.

Customer1: “Admin team thinks SQL Server is ….”

Response: “Sir, what do you think …? Can we help you validate this assumption against your applications data?”

Customer2: “That tool is better than this tool?”

Response: “Glad to hear on this tool, can you give us a glimpse of what capability does this tool do for you which you weren’t able to do before?”

And this list continues on and on … But I hope I gave you a flavor of what happens and how we probe and get more insights into the problem. Hence asking open-ended, non-leading, and neutral questions is the key here.

Be honest, acknowledge the issue, and follow-up as appropriate. Customers leave encouraged

Conclusion

We just discussed few techniques that I have learnt over the course of ~1 year. But when dealing with customers, don’t miss the opportunity to learn who your customers are, what they do, how they work, and what issues affect their productivity and success. If your conversations are to their pain points and their problems then you are likely to make good progress in understanding the problem from the outside-in method rather than solution out method. Cheers !!!

It’s mostly about understanding, not helping :)

It’s not what you know but who you know that makes the difference.

What do you look out for in conferences? I have been on both the receiving end and the giving side for years now and there is one thing that comes out clear for me personally – the Networking effect. I thought let me take this opportunity to talk out what are my perspectives to events and what we need to be aware when attending conferences in the future especially from Networking perspective. As an attendee the conferences are filled with boring moments and monotonous small talks back-to-back. Only the speaker has the luxury to make it exciting or put you to sleep – now trust me, try to put your kid to sleep and it is such a tough job. Last thing as a speaker you don’t want to work hard to put 100+ people to sleep in one sitting :).

Now let us get back to my top things to keep in mind while in these sessions / events. These are my top 5 -

Be ready to Give, Getting (is a byproduct)

Don’t get into a pressure of forcing yourself into networking and don’t focus on meeting a closed group of people. By enforcing this, you will miss out on all the fun that happens around the event and the new friends you can make. So the deal is simple, be there to share and learn from others too. Once you are into this mode of exploring and helping, you will see having a great time yourself and developing great new leads which you never imagined before.

Critical to understand – you shouldn’t look like you are desperate. There is always a fine line to be with-in and open. You don’t want to send a message that your agenda is out there to get something out of the interaction always. Don’t turn-off people – people are smart to see where a conversation leads.

Keep it simple and Open Conversations

Be a person of simple words with asking questions or delivering the answers too. Especially at social events be mentally prepared for your typical questions like – “What are you up to these days?”. This can be ice-breakers and avoid any jargon filled complex sentences. Keep it short, sweet and most importantly interesting :).

As much as possible if you want to get away from the monotony of these pre-thought questions – just divert the question in the next direction by asking a question back. Ask like – “what do you think of XYZ?” or “Why do you feel ABC is inevitable?” etc. These open questions can open up others and now you are about to “get” the most interesting answer and these are perspectives you want to not miss out.

It’s all about people. It’s about networking and being nice to people and not burning any bridges – Mike Davidson

Meet and greet everyone

Never look over anyone’s shoulder ever and more so at a social event. It is the last thing you don’t want to be remembered for. Don’t write off the opportunity coming your way. This world works via word-of-mouth and every bit helps. Appreciate each person you meet, don’t dismiss anyone, and don’t try to scan the room while talking to someone. This is a time for meeting new people and making new connections, to see if there is someone you can help or who can maybe help you.

Dos and Don’t

• Know your limits while Drinking – One or two social drinks are fine. But you don’t want to miss the opportunity – where business is the need and answers need to be sharp, crisp and clear. And alcohol is surely not helping you in that cause. You want to portray yourself as someone others want to work with, not necessarily drink with.
• Taking your business cards – This seems pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t have any on them when it comes time to exchange the cards. And make sure you make some note of the business card with the context. Keep a pen handy always !!!
• Be on the move – It’s way too easy to get stuck talking to one person for a long time. If you really go well with someone and want to talk more: exchange business cards and get in touch at a later date and then excuse yourself to speak to someone else. You want to make sure that you make as many conversations as possible before you leave.
• Get socially connected – In this world of facebooks, twitter etc, don’t miss the opportunity to share, care and connect online.

“Privacy is dead, and social media hold the smoking gun” – Pete Cashmore, Mashable CEO

Don’t forget to Follow up

At any networking event, you’ll shake tons of hands and collect a loads of business cards. If you meet someone that you’d like to speak with further, don’t wait for them to contact you. Take the initiative and make the first move.

Conclusion

It’s something you have to learn through trial and error. And the only way to improve is to just get out there and do it. Attend events, attend client meetings – be part of it and win it one step at a time. The main deal here is to conquer yourself first.

Welcome your comments, keep them coming !!!