Client Point of View II: The Next Phone Call

Your customers/clients have predictable needs.

Any organization that doesn’t act on its knowledge of those needs, risks alienating the people it most wants to impress.

I wrote the other day about talking on the phone with the local agency that handles driving tests.

The follow-up call today, to book a road test, offered up another example of making false assumptions about your clients.

I booked the road test today, and the woman on the phone was very specific about the things my son would need to bring with him:

• his driver’s license,
• his driving school certificate, and
• the receipt for his prepaid driving test.

Now, you may think that all our bases our covered now. As long as we bring those three things to the test, we’ll be fine.

But if we show up without a car, I can guarantee you we will have to rebook the test for three weeks hence.

My point in the earlier post was that people who are taking a driving test are probably doing it for the first time, so they’re unlikely to know what to expect.

So someone explaining the process to a client should assume they’re pretty ignorant.

So far, these guys have had two chances to assume the worst and tell us what to expect. And both times, they’ve assumed we’re as familiar with a driving exam, which we do at most a few times in a lifetime, as we are with taking out library books, which we do all the time.