My Accountant
Let me talk about my accountant for a minute.
I love my accountant! I love this guy in spite of the fact that he is not particularly cheap, sometimes he doesn’t return my calls, and to be honest, I think I can do a lot of these accounting stuff myself. But I love him for some very simple reasons:
- He always solves my problems
- I trust him, I can feel he is very skilled, I feel my money is in good hands. Interestingly, I can only really understand 50% of the stuff he talks about (this guy talks fast), but I can very clearly sense passion and skill, you can’t fake these stuff
- He is fun, when I go and see him, we laugh a lot
- I feel he looks out for my interests, when there are investment opportunities, he lets me know, so he does more than just my taxes
I know I might be able to find another accountant cheaper and maybe just as good, but I don’t care, I can comfortably afford his fees and I am having fun!
You see, my response toward my accountant has become an emotional one.
How does your customers feel about your service?
IT services tend to involve emotions, sometimes intense ones
In most scenarios, emotions will become a factor in IT services, here is why:
- In IT services, you sell people’s skills, so it is people centered
- IT services tend to be mid to long term, so there are plenty of time to develop trust or dis-trust
- Given critical importance IT systems in most organisations, when your customers put a large chunk of cash on the table and give you admin rights to their critical systems, of course, emotions run high.
The emotion side of things are never documented in any procedures or policies, but it is everywhere, and affect people’s decision profoundly.
Many IT decision makers are very busy and very confused, they need shortcuts, and their feelings are the shortcuts
All the IT decision makers in every organisations I have worked with, are faced with the same problems:
- Too many meetings, many are pointless and useless time wasters
- Too many technologies to know
- Too many vendors to manage, not enough vendors to trust
- Existing environment is a mess
- Existing process is a mess
- All of the above causes confusion and paralyzes action
So what do the smart decision maker do? They ensure they have the right people on the bus first, and then figure out where to drive it (Jim Collins, “Good to Great“). Smart decision makers do not try to understand all the details, it is impossible, they find the people who has the skills and who they trust, and delegate the responsibilities, and trust is certainly emotional.
Why do some large service organisations suck so bad?
I know some customers had very poor experiences with well known, well established IT services companies. After the customers spending tons of cash, and many painful weeks and months later, all they have to show for it is a dozen of half finished projects, which brings zero business benefits.
Why do they suck so bad? Here are some of my thoughts.
Typically, engaging a service company goes something like this:
- Customer has a business need
- Customer goes through a vendor selection process, sometimes tendering, selecting based on price, reputation and past experience. This is where the sales guys do their magic and get the contract
- The contract is signed, the sales guys move on and move out, and the engineers move in
- Now entering the long and painful journey of project managing, distrusting, blaming, misunderstanding, change manging, mass emailing, fire fighting, compromising, re-scoping, mass emailing again…blah blah blah, all that stuff
- Emotions run high and low through out
If we look the key factors in a good service delivery, which are:
- The vendor has to care
- The vendor has to be skilled
- Then vendor and the customer must be able to communicate
- The vendor and the customer must be able to build trust
None of the above factors has anything to do with the size of the company, it has everything to do with the person(s) who is doing the project.
Love your customers, Love your staff and forget the competition
If you run a IT service company, I think you have a real chance of getting some long term loyal customers, if you understand the customer’s pain and the pillars of good services.
- Love your customers, they feed you . If you are genuine and persistent, they will feel your love and you can build trust from there
- Love your staff, they feed you too . If you are genuine and persistent, they will feel your love and give you their time, attention and skill. It is true we pay for people’s time, but they have to volunteer their passion
- Keep your skills up and keep on innovate
- Forget the competition, you have no control over what they do anyway
So, what you think? Leave me your thoughts.
