Our Customer Guides have been conducting Annual Review Calls with our current customers over the past few weeks. We are energized every year by how these calls go and the things we learn by doing them.
In each call, we follow this simple but effective roadmap:
- How did we perform overall in 2021?
- What did we do best in 2021? Where did we fail in 2021?
- What are your plans for 2022 and how can we begin working ahead?
Annual Review Calls are not something we do to check a box. These calls are critical as we live out our values and work to build deeper relationships and improve overall customer experience and value.
These conversations give us valuable insight into changes in their world, things we have done well, and areas we can improve. All of which helps us create the personalized experience we want to provide for our customers.
Most Review Calls go very well, confirming we’ve done our job well and delivered the value we hope to deliver. However, on some calls, we learn that we’ve fallen short and did not meet a customer’s expectations. In either case, there is an opportunity to improve.
When we learn there are areas we are doing well, we double down and look for ways to refine and improve it further. Conversely, when we learn that our service is not delighting a customer, we go to work to find out why and do our best to fix it.
Each year the Annual Review Call process improves as we learn how to ask better questions and make deeper connections with our customers.
In order for these calls to yield value for both us and our customers, we know we must do the following while following the simple roadmap above.
- Listen well
- Reflect to make sure we understand
- Document what needs to be done
- Plan to do it
Most companies have internal and external marketing programs promising a certain level of customer experience. These programs create an expectation of what it should be like to be a customer. The reality is, however, the actual experience varies for each customer, meeting or exceeding expectations for some and falling short for others.
The Annual Review Calls are a critical tool for our team to discover the difference between our promised level of experience and their actual experience. The only way to align expectations and build stronger relationships is to genuinely connect with our customers to find out where things stand.
We love hearing we are doing a great job and hope to never hear we fell short of meeting a customer’s expectations. But when we do, we don’t make excuses, we are honest and take responsibility. We then get to work making the necessary changes.
We genuinely appreciate each customer. From the entire Goodson Clothing & Supply Company team, thank you for the opportunity to serve you. We genuinely appreciate it!
For anyone reading this we have not had the opportunity to serve yet, we look forward to that opportunity.
