In a blog post, Christopher Penn wrote, “transparency is the currency of trust.” When you’re onboarding a new client, you need to build trust with your buyer quickly.
When I first joined GuideCX, it was an initiative of mine to meet with some of our largest customers to get to know them. While on a call, I had a brief exchange that went something like this.
Me: “Tell me how you engage your buyers and customer executive sponsors?”
Client: “I am not sure what you mean, why would we want to do that? We rely on our point of contact on the customer side to relay the information.”
A few months later, I was connecting with an old leader of mine at his office at the end of the day, discussing a couple of topics. Prior to our conversation ending, he turned to me and said, “Did you know, I signed a contract to purchase technology we are going to be using and not once has anyone updated me? I signed an agreement for thousands of dollars and I have no clue where we are in this process.”
In that moment, I perceived a waning of confidence and the house of cards crumbling for this new vendor of his. The question is, who’s to blame for trust not being built?
Come to find out, work was being done to implement the solution. Was it the leader’s fault for not staying on top of it? Was it the interns fault for not updating the leader? Or was it the vendor’s fault for assuming an intern would update the organization on the value of their purchase?
To me, the answer is plain and simple. This is one-hundred percent the vendor’s fault. It’s their software, the value of their company, and their onboarding process. Which means, they needed to own the updates and the narrative. If “transparency is the currency of trust” and someone is paying you their currency, then you owe them the transparency.
Here are three ways to create transparency to build trust for your buyers using GuideCX.
Add your buyer and executive sponsor to the project team
When you fire up a new project, as part of your process, immediately add the individual who signed the agreement and/or the executive sponsor. Your initiative to invite them into your process is the first step to garnering trust. You are showing confidence in your project and that you have nothing to hide.
Leverage the project manager’s note
Take control of the narrative instead of hoping your point of contact will convey the message that you want them to. By default, a project overview email is sent to a project’s team members every Monday morning.
Project managers can personalize a note that appears at the top of this email in the “Edit Project” pop-up menu, under “PM Note”.
Every Monday morning, your buyer and executive can be reassured their business is safe with your organization.
Add your buyer or executive sponsor as a watcher to critical tasks
Most buyers or executives do not want to be in the weeds. However, they are very interested in achieving key milestones.
Identify in your project what the key milestones and tasks are. Add your buyer and or executive sponsor as a watcher in GuideCX to those tasks.
Watchers can be added to a task when they need to receive information about the task without having any of the responsibility. When the task is updated, the watcher will be notified.
By adding your buyers and executives as watchers on key tasks, you are building automated safeguards into your process to show the right people when progress is being made.
I was once asked, “if you don’t do it, who else will?” So I will ask you, if you don’t take control of updating your buyer to build trust with your brand, then who else will?
Next, check out Peter Ord’s webinar on accelerating revenue through customer trust.
- 3 Ways to Build Trust with Your Buyer During Onboarding in GuideCX - January 25, 2022
- How to Manage Project Time - January 24, 2022
- How to Manage Scope Creep - November 1, 2021
