Growing up in the 90s a popular movie was Cruel Intentions. This blog is not related to Cruel Intentions’ plot.
This post will describe how a CSM’s good intentions can turn cruel in overpromising and ways we can avoid empty promises with our customers.
Let’s review:
How Overpromising Can Happen
CSM may see an opportunity to help our customer and grow our relationship.
For example, we may identify a need to submit product feedback, resolve a product issue or recap a business meeting. We promise our customer we will look into these items.
When we get busier or move on to a next set of priorities we may not follow through on what we originally promised to our customer.
The Result of Overpromising
At this point several outcomes may happen:
- Our customer notices we didn’t follow through and speaks up
- Our customer doesn’t speak up but feels we missed the mark
- The customer may not notice – yet we still didn’t help our customer with their goals
When we make faulty promises we take away from our customer’s trust in us which can cause our customer to see us as a less reliable or less committed partner.
How Can We Avoid Empty Promises?
We should think realistically about what we can do to help avoid empty promises.
Here are some prompts we can ask ourselves:
- What can I guarantee?
- Is achieving this outcome wishful thinking?
- Am I representing myself correctly to the customer in what I’m promising?
We can filter our thoughts through reality to promise only what we can get done.
Rather than overpromise we can look for opportunities to “not yet promise” and over deliver. For example, we may avoid making a promise until we’ve taken time to vet the situation. Upon discovering we can carry out the opportunity we delight our customer with the result.
We can take time to clarify the situation and focus on making promises we can carry out.
Keeping Good Intentions
Our main goal should be taking pride in honest expectations of where we can help the customer. We can gain integrity by doing what we promise and keep good intentions with our clients.