Episode 55:Customer Service as a Consultant
We talk about the importance of customer service as a consultant.
Summary
Nick and Kai frame consulting as customer service, starting from Paul Ford’s essay arguing the web’s core question is ‘why wasn’t I consulted?’ They work through what that means practically: handling complaints, staying professional on bad days, managing unreasonable requests, and knowing when to fire a client.
Highlights
- Nick cites Paul Ford’s essay ‘The Web is a Customer Service Medium,’ which argues every medium answers a fundamental question and the web’s is ‘why wasn’t I consulted?’, making every marketing page essentially an audit of that objection.
- Nick draws no distinction between consulting and customer service. Scripted answers to common questions, emergency JavaScript debugging, handling a complaint email, all of it is servicing a client.
- When a subscriber complained that recent Revised Weekly lessons weren’t valuable, Nick responded by sending all back issues plus an early draft of his A/B testing manual. The subscriber called it the most forceful response he could have given and found 20 actionable items in it.
- Zingerman’s deli sends employees to acting school so they can bring it on bad days. Nick uses this as his model: the client didn’t cause your bad year, so they shouldn’t have to know about it. Tap out or perform.
- Kai’s technique for saying no: offer a ‘choice of yeses.’ Present two alternatives you’ve already pre-selected. The client picks one and feels they have autonomy in the outcome.
- Both treat unexpected or ‘unreasonable’ requests as marketing bugs. If a client assumed something you didn’t intend, something in the sales page or onboarding created that expectation and needs fixing.
- Kai admits he’s been poor at email for a month and names it directly as a customer service failure, a signal he needs a triage system to separate emails that need replies from ones that don’t.
Read the transcript
So there’s an article on the internet. I know it’s shocking, but I found one. And it’s called The Web is a Customer Service Medium. And the it’s by a guy named Paul Ford who’s very, very good at boiling a concept down well and making it legible and warm to people. And something I respect tremendously in him. And he basically says that every form of media has a question that it’s fundamentally answering. Like TV’s fundamental question is what’s going on in the world right now. Newspaper is what happened yesterday, right? So what is the webs? The fundamental question of the web, he believes, and I am inclined to agree, is why wasn’t I consulted? And now that that sounds accusatory, but you can answer it factually. Like, you have no voice in this conversation. Like, oh, okay, great, move on with something else, right? Or you were consulted, I’m accounting for it in this particular way, right? And that’s effectively a marketing page because you’re trying to audit objections. I think that the statement that’s in the title of the article, The Web as a Customer Service Medium, is interesting, right? If you think about somebody going on a tweet rant against United Airlines for losing their luggage or something like that, there’s definitely something to that, right? Well, United Airlines was humming along just fine and then you showed up. And now you’re angering up the joint with your lost luggage, and now they have to deal with it. And you’re a verified account, because of course you are. You very important consultant, you. And some they have they really have to take you seriously because they don’t know what verified account means, just like Twitter doesn’t know what a verified account means. And they have to do customer service on you, right? So what happens when somebody comes through the door and they want a problem solved? Well, you are serving them, right? They call it client services for a reason. You are doing client services. You are effectively servicing a customer. The customer is your client. There is no distinction. You can call them a customer, which is a little weird. Call them a client seems a little bit more hands-on. I really don’t find a distinction between what I’m doing as a consultant and customer service, right? Because customer service, sometimes it’s in reciting a script, right? Okay, well, what is the one A B testing idea that is going to make me a lot of money? Well, I don’t know. Here’s a million reasons why. That’s a script. I have that answer pretty well prepared by this point. Or somebody comes in the door and they’re like, my A-B test is broken and you need to fix it. Okay, well now I need to take off my consultant hat and put on my JavaScript developer hat and try and fix it, right? That’s customer service, right? So I don’t know. Like, I think that pretty much all of the actions I do every day with especially my high touch clients are customer service. In fact, just now This wasn’t even somebody who was a client of mine. But I got an email from somebody who was like, The last few revised weekly lessons haven’t been terribly valuable for me lately. I’m looking for stuff that’s more about how to generate A-B testing ideas. And I apply back and CC my assistant, and I’m like, I’m sorry, that’s not the case for you. Here are all of my previous revised weekly lessons. Kelly, can you send those along? Here’s an early draft of the A-B testing manual. Let me know what you think. And he was like, that was the most forceful response you could have possibly given me. This is amazing. Oh my God, I found like 20 things I need to do in my business right now. Thank you so much. Is there a I’m good. Are you good? I’m good. Oh, yeah, I’m good. I’m like, okay, then we’re good. We’re good. I hope you enjoy next week’s lesson. It will not help you in any meaningful way.
But yeah, taking any objection like that, any interaction you have with a customer, a client, a potential customer, a potential client, and seeing how you could deliver exceptional service, how you could deliver Outstanding exceptional customer service. And I think that it boils down to responsiveness. It boils down to providing value. It boils down to making them feel heard, even if what they’re saying. Isn’t extremely relevant to the conversation that your product or your service is having. Somebody writes in and says, Hey, I read your marketing page, I’m confused about X, Y, and Z. Well, Their concerns might not be 100% relevant, but their concerns are things that other people might have. And so it’s good to note it, flag it. Address it, provide value, and say, Oh, hey, you asked this question here. Let’s give you an answer, or let’s provide some additional value here. And see if The complaints or concerns come up multiple times. If they do, that’s a wonderful signal that something needs to change in terms of the systems and processes for the business. it’s a couple of one off things, well, that’s fine. It’s a one-off thing. If other people write in there like Nick, I was expecting content more like A, not B, well, that’s a great signal to you that the marketing page for your site has a bug, and the bug is promising A when You’re actually delivering B. And so that needs to be addressed. And so I think any sort of customer-service interaction is an opportunity to strengthen a relationship. And also identify any bugs or problems within the system overall. And it might be: we don’t have a processing procedure for this, and so we’re falling down whenever we do it. Or we’re selling apples and the customer is expecting oranges. We need to solve this problem. But When we think about our number one job as a consultant as being that trusted advisor who’s providing advice, direction, who’s providing this customer service or client service, I think it re-scopes a lot of our interactions as consultants into a different frame. Like, as we’re having this conversation, I’m realizing, like, wow. One of the more valuable, like, I’ve been terrible about email for the past month. I’m so sorry if you’re listening to this and I owe you an email. It has been terrible, terrible on my side. And I realize that’s me falling down in terms of my customer service as a consultant. I should make it a priority to A. Have a good system in place to flag the good emails I need to respond to from the emails that don’t necessarily need a response, so I’m not dealing with information overload. And B, Respond to those important emails as quickly as I can and either say, Hey, you know what? I’m slammed this month, and I’m not going to be able to get you a full reply in time. Here’s two articles that I think are valuable, and let me circle back to this when I have the time and attention necessary, or give them the full reply that they deserve and need right now. it does nobody good to let an email sit. Right, right.
You know I I kind of have a forty eight hour rule on email, um, but most of it gets replied to that day. And the reason I have a forty eight hour rule is like If I’m on vacation or something like that. And you just set clear boundaries around. And we’ve talked a lot about that in the past. But I think kind of what we’re dancing around, and what I want to stab dead about this is. You’re trying to find the most humane way to treat a person when they come in the door. And I know that is so squishy and lovey-duffy, and you have no idea how to actually reply to it. But you know when you’re not being humane to somebody, you know? Like, I Talk with people all the time that are like, I tell them to fuck off. I’m like, well, you know, that’s not the humane thing because you do it with a nervous laugh and a little bit of shame, right? And That’s not good customer service. Customer service is quickly and promptly solving the problem. You know, I tell you, um One of the greatest businesses in America is a Jewish deli called Zingerman’s. We’ve talked about it a bunch of times in the past, and I haven’t mentioned this before, but they send pretty much all of their employees to acting school. Why do they do that? Because when you’re having a bad day or a bad year, like I did in 2016, you still need to bring it in your job. You know, and and act, figure out some way to put on a decent face and not be a dick to somebody else. Because they didn’t do anything to you. And honestly, you’re just going to make your life worse if you are. You know? You’re not doing yourself any favors. So I think that, you know, if you are if you’re having a bad day or a bad year, other person doesn’t care and they shouldn’t have to know. You know? And if you’re really too flooded, just tap out. You’re on the internet most of the time, so you don’t really need to.
Yeah, the point you just shared about if you’re having a bad day or a bad year and nobody else needs to know about it, I think it’s really, really true that if I’m having a shitty day, it doesn’t. Need to impact, you know, my friend. It should impact my support group that I reach out to. I should reach out to friends and family and be like, I’m having a shitty day, this is why. But it doesn’t need to filter down to client relationships or prospect relationships. Like, That needs to be sandboxed from what’s going on. And either, like you said, you tap out or you address it as humanely as you can, and or you wait a day and wait for the shitty day to pass and respond to the email the next day. But The things that are going on in your personal life, I view as very sandboxed from the business life. And I think it’s okay to say I’m overwhelmed right now and can’t work on this project. And, you know, let’s start this project in March or April instead of now because of XYZ reason. But it needs that clear delineation between, well, I need to provide the best client service I can to my client. To do that, I need to be a trusted advisor. I need to recommend the right things for them. To do that, I need to be willing to say, I have the time and attention for this, or I do not. Right, right.
And honestly, being able to like hide behind a Slack window and like not You don’t have to see my facial expression or my reaction in any way. It allows you to service a little bit more effectively, right? And I think there’s definitely some value to that. I don’t know what else to say about this topic.
Yeah. Common pitfalls, challenges we’ve run into, things we try to get better at it over time. People being constantly annoying. Oh, that’s a good one.
Pathologically bad customers. I feel fire them and refund their money. Fire them and refund their money. You know, they have to be polite to you. They have to be kind to you. There are limits to good customer service, and that’s when they break their contract of good human decency, right? I had one guy, actually the same guy who asked for the revised weekly stuff. He asked my assistant for an invoice. He asked a bunch of other questions. Nothing on him. These are valid questions. He did it in a polite and kind way. We answered all of them. He walked away happy. I think. You know, and that’s it. Like, that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is when people start being like abusive. I’ve heard of people hitting on others in customer service role. Just horrible, horrible shit that nobody should have any right to deal with. You no, don’t do that. Don’t do that. You’re better than that. What happens if people ask for stuff that you’re not capable of doing? Offer no and offer politely no and offer an alternative, offer a refund, that sort of thing.
I always try to frame it as a choice of yeses. If, like, my response is a no, I’m going to offer them a choice of yeses between two no’s. I’m going to say, Okay, so we’re not going to do the thing you wanted. We’re going to do something else. Here’s your choice of the two things. So it’s not me saying no, and the conversation just hits a wall there. It’s. I want to find a path forward. What I could put on the table are A or B. Which would you prefer to move forward with? And they’re both options that I’m choosing, but It empowers the person on the other side of this conversation to feel like they have a choice, even though I’ve pre-selected both of those choices. So it might be: hey, this project’s not going well. Here are the two options that we could move forward. They might suggest something else, and then it becomes a conversation, or they might choose one of the two options. But simply saying, No, done, it doesn’t feel like the right way to me. I really like Offering, hey, here are two alternatives, which one do you want to move forward with? So it feels like they have some autonomy and buy-in in this process.
One last thing. What happens if somebody asks something that you believe is unreasonable? I get this all the time. Somebody’s like, somebody had an unreasonable request. It doesn’t matter what the request is, it’s just that you believe personally that it’s unreasonable. Now, it might be. It might be. I’m not a person who believes that the customer is always right. The customer is a motivation to ask the unreasonable request, right? Are they trying to take advantage of you? That’s not good. Need to shut that down. Are they coming out of a place where they assumed something that you may necessarily not have believed was true? Now that’s more interesting, because now you have to dig into a new set of motivations that might teach you a little bit more about customer behavior. And I feel like that’s the majority of quote, unreasonable unquote requests, right? There are situations where you’re surprised by why they’re making the request and what’s motivating them to do so. That’s pretty much it for that little bit there.
And I think it feeds back into if they had, if In their mind, they believe it’s a reasonable request, but it’s an unexpected request when you receive it. In my mind, it goes into a marketing bug type of Category where. Oh, something set this expectation up. Was it something I did? Was it something that they came into this with an inherent belief on? If it’s something I did, let me fix that so people don’t assume that. Am I promising XYZ result on my sales page and we don’t see that? Well, I probably shouldn’t be promising that result if that’s not the typical outcome. If clients say, like, oh, you said da da da, and I’m not getting da da da. Okay, great. Bug fix here. How could we make it so people are entering into this? we aren’t presenting them with the wrong set of internal expectations for how the project or how the interaction will go.
Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, it’s it’s a way of practicing kindness. And you know, we we got into this because we wanted to work independently, but that doesn’t free you from the obligation of Having to interact with other people. Like you’re going to have to interact with other people in pretty much any job you do. And it is the grand bargain of humanity that we all depend on each other in some way. And If you’re independent, you’re probably going to have to service other people and work with them to be as kind to others as possible. I know we all want to work our way into a hole where we never have to speak with others. That day is a little ways off. And until then, you just need to be kind to others. And hopefully, this was helpful for practicing that a bit.