How to Support Your Customers' Problem-Solving

Video produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly

Cynthia Young, CJ Young Consulting Founder and CEO, discussed what is involved in facilitating customer problem-solving during her presentation at KMWorld Connect 2020.

"So do you solve problems for your customers or do they support your problem solving?" she said. "And what I mean by this is, is it in your statement of work to solve their problems or do they only have you solve problems when they want you to?"

When helping customers troubleshoot their problems, it's important to figure out who leads the conversation in regards to discovering the solution.

"Make sure that, you know, when you provide a recommendation that you take into account what their requirements are, as well as what, you know, what type of process you can support, because not only you can problem solve, you're probably going to be doing the work to make that problem work out for the customer," Young said.

Then you need to ask yourself if the customer has established a set of rules or requirements when problem-solving. Other questions to consider include: Are you restricted by a certain amount of money? Do you have a time restriction? Is there anything that's off limits? And if they can provide somebody, what is that person to be allowed to do? Or they can be allowed to speak for the boss? Are they only allowed to speak so far? 

"Talk to your customer, have a set aside meeting where you talk about what they're able to allow you to do and what they're going to be doing and let them know the type of time constraints that they need to also support. They can't wait till 11th hour to make the decision," she said.