Tips For Having a Better Customer Visit

Recently I had the opportunity to visit a customer with some coworkers. The purpose of the visit was to review their current business situation with our software, address concerns, and provide a look at the way forward. Overall it was a productive meeting and I think the customer got a lot of value out of it. As I was preparing for and participating in the meeting, I couldn't help but think of some things that can be done to ensure a successful client visit.

Open Communication

It's imperative to communicate openly with all parties involved in the visit. The customer, your coworkers, and anyone else involved. Before the meeting, I was struggling to see my role in it. So, I asked the organizer of the meeting about the purpose of the meeting and how I, as a software engineer, fit into it. It took a few days before I got a response and the response I got didn't really help. So, I asked again and it took a few weeks to get a response that, again, didn't address my concerns.

In a professional setting, the purpose of the meeting should be clear to everyone invited to it. It's also important to take the time to ensure everyone knows why they're going to the meeting and what role they'll play. Don't invite people to meetings if they're not needed. If they simply are there to support "just in case" there are questions, maybe having them join remotely would be better or not join at all.

Proofread Everything

On this same customer visit, there was a somewhat embarrassing moment during the presentation. There was a glaring error in what was being presented. The customer stopped the presenter to have him clarify if the slide contained an error or not. It was a simple little error but caused a really awkward exchange. From what I could observe, it seemed to cause the customer to lose a little bit of faith and credibility in our company. While it was a minor thing that they've probably forgotten, it did cause some confusion.

It also wasn't the only error. The slides that were used had a number of formatting issues, misspellings, and other syntactical and aesthetic mistakes. Basically the slides weren't professional but taking a short amount of time to proofread and ensure consistency would have gone a long way to improve our image as a company.

Tailor Everything To The Customer

One final improvement I noticed during this visit is the importance of remembering your audience. Know your customer. Know who they are, what they do, how they use your product, and how your product can help them be even better. This means maybe talking about things that you're not comfortable with. We all have our favorite things to talk about. The favorite part of the product that we think is really cool. Or maybe there's parts of the product that the company wants us to talk about as much as we can. But if the customer isn't ever going to need that feature, why talk about it to them? In doing so, you're wasting the customer's time and showing the customer that you don't know who they are. This may cause them to question if you care about them and their success.

Instead of talking about what you want to talk about, find out what the customer needs, learn about those things, and talk about how your product can help with those things. Sure you may have this huge awesome feature in the product, but unless they need it or might use it in the future, don't spend a lot of time on it. Spend more time on the parts of your product that will help them where they're at or that'll help them get to where they want to be.

Conclusion

In conclusion, customer visits can be very valuable if you take the time to make them valuable. If there's any confusion on the purpose of the visit or if any individual member is wondering how they fit into the meeting, take the time to explain and clarify. Don't be afraid to let people not attend if they don't see value in it. Make sure your materials are refined, professional, and free of errors. Also make sure the material is tailored to the customer and their needs. Show that you know them and that you care about them.

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