When I started out in renewals, the job was fairly simple on paper. The customer bought a software licence, the first year’s support was sold alongside it, and about two months before the deadline for renewal, someone like me would get in touch to let them know their license was up for renewal.
Then I started doing something a bit differently. Around six months after the sale, I’d call the customer and say, “Your renewal is coming up in six months. Here’s what I’ve seen so far.” Perhaps they’d already done a software upgrade, or perhaps they’d logged a run of support calls which showed up a pattern of issues.
It was never in my job description to get more involved in the detail but I knew I’d be able to show the value far more easily if I understood what was going on in the account. And those conversations told me a great deal. If a customer was calling in a lot, why was that? What was going on? Did they need more help to get the best from what they’d bought? What sort of communication had they experienced?
I still use that story in my training, because it says something most businesses forget; that the conversation with a customer shouldn’t only happen at the sale and at the renewal. Everything in between is where you learn what’s really happening, and when that conversation stops, growth starts to become guesswork.
The conversation that stops after the sale
Last month I wrote about leading teams that deliver and what happens inside a business when consistency, clarity and communication line up. This month I want to turn the other way; towards the customer.
The pattern I see most often goes like this: The salesperson goes in, sells the product or service, and moves on to the next one. Delivery picks it up. And then nobody really goes back. Who does the post-sale piece? Who checks whether it’s still working for the customer, or whether what they need has changed?
In a lot of businesses, the honest answer is no one, so the business keeps delivering what it thinks the customer needs. Issues come up and get fixed, one at a time, but nobody steps back and asks: when did we last actually talk to this customer about how things are going?
The answer is a simple one. It’s a continual conversation with customers and regular check ins. A customer journey doesn’t stop when the contract is signed, and neither should the conversation.
When sales promises what delivery can’t keep
One of the biggest places this breaks down is right at the start of the relationship.
Sales teams will sometimes oversell. Not out of bad intent: they want the deal, and the customer wants to hear a yes. But the expectations are set at the very beginning, and then it’s left to delivery and operations to meet them. Sometimes they simply can’t.
Larger corporates have learned to guard against this. Many use what’s called an approval matrix: a standard contract, and anything outside that standard needs senior sign-off before it’s promised. It isn’t the most exciting part of the process, but it stops the business committing to something it can’t do.
Small and medium-sized businesses rarely have anything like that in place, and that’s where I see a real failing. I’ve trained teams in medium-sized businesses where exactly this happened. Sales set expectations that operations couldn’t meet, customer issues and dissatisfaction followed further down the line, and everyone ended up scrabbling around to catch up.
You don’t need a corporate approval process to put this right. You just need sales and delivery talking to each other before anything is agreed, and an honest conversation with the customer about what can genuinely be delivered. In my experience, clients don’t need perfection. They need expectations set up front that match reality; and right from the beginning.
What customers ask for isn’t always what they need
When I’ve worked with and trained medium-sized companies on customer journey and sales communication, customer-facing teams would regularly come back and tell us a customer wanted the fastest possible response or delivery. On just about everything.
When we asked a few more questions, it often turned out they didn’t need same day at all. Sometimes they needed it within two days and had asked for same day because a previous experience had left them without much confidence that it would arrive on time.
That’s the difference between what a customer asks for and what they actually need, and only a conversation tells you which is which. Get it wrong and you either promise something you struggle to deliver, or you put cost into a service the customer never needed in the first place.
Three questions worth asking
What does a good customer conversation look like? It doesn’t need a script. Three simple questions go a very long way:
- What’s working well for you?
- What’s proving a challenge at the moment?
- What’s changed in your world recently?
The third is the one people most often skip, and it’s usually the most useful. Customers aren’t necessarily cutting back. More often, they’re shifting priorities and rarely have just one product or one supplier to think about; and a change in regulation or in their own plans can quickly shift what matters to them. You won’t know unless you ask.
Then listen; properly. The follow-up questions that come from active listening are where you find the pieces of information nobody else has, and that’s where the real value sits.
Don’t be afraid to open the can of worms
If the questions are that simple, why don’t more businesses ask them?
In my experience, it’s because they’re worried about what they’ll hear. Ask a customer what’s proving a challenge, or what’s changed in their world, and you might open a can of worms: a product quality issue, a service that hasn’t worked the way they expected, a frustration nobody inside the business wants to own. So, it feels easier not to ask, and to look at the relationship from a narrow, siloed view.
But the issue is there whether you ask or not. Left alone, it surfaces further down the line, and by then the impact is greater; or could even worse. That’s the point where customer loyalty goes, and customers don’t come back.
Customers respect the business that asks. They would far rather you came to them with the awkward question than wait for them to tell you they’re leaving. The businesses I’ve trained that found this hardest would have been in a much stronger place if they’d been a little braver and kept those conversations going.
Everyone who touches the customer is part of the conversation
The customer conversation isn’t only the job of sales.
At Oracle, I drove a programme around one simple question. We were relying on our salespeople to bring in leads, but what about the engineers? The engineers who went out to service our customers had more information than any salesperson in the company. They were on site, having real conversations, and they could ask the questions that told us where the customer was heading.
The same thinking applies to stock and parts. You don’t want warehouses holding too much stock, because that drives your costs up. But you can only plan well if you understand where the customer is going, why they’re swapping out so many parts, and what your engineers have seen when they’ve been out on the road.
This is where the silos I wrote about last month matter again. When every conversation with the customer is visible across the business, a genuine 360° view with handoffs that work, people at every touchpoint can add value. That visibility creates consistency, trust and confidence because customers no longer have to repeat themselves or navigate disconnected teams.
A little structure helps. Teams often need some guidance: a clear sense that the business wants them to ask these questions and doesn’t mind if they open the can of worms. Not rules that box people in, but enough shared understanding that people feel able to take the initiative.
Clarity, trust and customers who come back
When the conversation keeps going, the outcome is customer clarity. You know what your customers need now, what’s changing for them, and where you can genuinely help or have an insight as to where you can work better together to deliver what they need. From that comes trust, and from trust comes loyalty and customers who stay. According to the Institute of Customer Service, almost a third of UK customers will pay more for excellent service, with trust in the company the main reason.
It mirrors what happens inside a team. Trust isn’t something you can build directly. It’s what shows up when you’re consistent, clear and honest, with your people and your customers alike.
Here’s a question to sit with this week: when did you last ask a customer what’s proving a challenge for them at the moment, or what’s changed in their world?
If you’ve ever wished for someone to think these things through with you, that’s what The Insights Room is for. Book a discovery call and we’ll talk about what’s really happening with your customers, and where the conversation might need picking up again.