Sometimes your business decisions mean you don’t address all customer complaints.
It’s one of those truths that people don’t talk about. Because it makes you feel you aren’t being customer centric.
Yet, it’s not that black and white.
I was reminded of this at my Toastmaster club session last night
The club transitioned to virtual meetings during the Pandemic. (I joined last July while still virtual.)
In the fall, clubs in our district considered a change back to in-person meetings or possibly hybrid meetings.
We discussed it in the club.
To do hybrid well we needed to purchase equipment. We likely needed someone in a producer role, managing different camera views and switching as appropriate. There was time and energy to commit as well as budget.
Our club decided to focus on a return to live meetings.
Yet… we have continued with the Zoom calls for exceptions when people can’t attend. It’s been 1 or 2 on Zoom and 10 to 13 in the room.
This business decision put us in the grey area.
The Zoom part of the meeting isn’t the best it could be if we had made the investment to be fully hybrid.
Cobbled together with member laptops and/or iPads in the room. A USB microphone for better sound. Last night we tried casting the Zoom call to the TV in the room because we had a guest speaker. An experiment with mixed results!
The guest speaker came from a club holding hybrid meetings. So, unlike our adhoc experiments, they have setup a repeatable process with someone embracing the producer role.
He gave us feedback that his experience was poor. He had trouble hearing everyone.
We listened. Acknowledged his feedback. Yet didn’t commit in the moment to changing anything.
In a message to some of the club executives today I called out the elephant in the room.
What we are doing is going to lead to complaints. Yet, given our decision to not go fully hybrid, we may not always respond with a change. We may need to tolerate some complaints.
There are times when, while still committing to customer centricity, you make business decisions that result in you offering a bronze service rather than platinum. That might invite customer complaints.
And that may be okay.
Hmmm.
I know that one of the execs prefers we stop doing the Zoom call entirely.
Other execs like that we accommodate exceptions, albeit imperfectly, because that means we are responding to a customer need to not always attend in person.
Possibly warranting further thougtht.
Hmmm.
Does this resonate for you?
