The President’s Column Dear Member
The importance of getting and following instructions has been on my mind a lot recently.
Dinner this evening brought this to the fore. Trying to reason with a teenage daughter, fixed on a course of action, who is absolutely convinced that she knows best and that you and your wife have recently emerged from a desert island (and therefore know nothing) will do that to you!
As our business grows and matures and our work to systemise procedures and workflows matures, I find myself contemplating those times when things don’t go quite as planned and clients are clearly not totally happy with the service they receive; and how I can design systems and train staff to minimise this risk.
I’m coming more and more to the view that the root cause of this rare, but important dissatisfaction stems from, and can be avoided, if the first contact a staff member has with a client is handled in a considered, competent and focussed manner, and this approach to first contact becomes standard operating procedure.
I’m not sure how the business literature would phrase this but I
think the key to avoiding a down- stream unhappy client lies in the surveyor getting ‘into the head’ of the client at first contact. A possibly more PC way of putting it would be the surveyor investing in a pre-conditioning of the client.
In simple terms, it’s my view that we should invest time to fully understand the task the client wants us to perform and make sure that we can do what they ask, in the time frame that they are looking for, and that we are the right survey practice to meet their needs.
It goes deeper than this though. We need to spend time talking to the client, gauging their level of knowledge, their understanding of the nature of the advice we will be giving and making sure they are clear in what they are going to get in terms of a report, and without putting too fine a point on it, working out if they are clients we want to work with. Quite often I find that clients actually don’t know what they need or what we can do for them. This is the opportunity to gently guide them to the right landing place if this is the case.
Here is some hard truth. Some clients have a very unrealistic view of what we can do for them. Some are working to an agenda that is at odds with our business ethos,
and some are just trouble with a capital ‘T’- and are probably best avoided if one wishes to remain sane and in business…
These rare individuals and organisations are easily avoided if the time is taken to talk to them, and as a result ensure that every job instruction is clear and understood, and written down, thereby ensuring you go into each situation with your eyes open.
With all parties fully aware of what is being commissioned, and why, and what and when they are going to be getting their report as a result of the instruction, my view is that a survey company operating at a consistently high standard unhappy clients are going to be exceptionally rare. Remember you choose your clients and not the other way round.
Now if teenage daughters could come with an instruction manual in future all will be right in the Brancher house!
Mr Adam Brancher President International Institute of Marine Surveying Email:
adambrancher@kedge.com.au
The Report • June 2017 • Issue 80 | 5
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