We just got back from a trip to my wife’s family reunion up in Utah. We stayed at the Wolf Lodge condominium complex nestled in a beautiful mountain valley known as Eden.

Unfortunately, our experience wasn’t like staying in the garden of Eden. The air conditioning in the condos wasn’t working. When we arrived the temperature inside was 85 degrees and didn’t start cooling down until the sun had set. We never reached a comfortable temperature.

The next day we went and complained to the management. She told us she thought they were bringing a new condenser and that it should be fixed that day. It wasn’t. When we stopped by later that day to see what was happening, there was no manager to be found. We checked out the next day and were again unable to find anyone with whom to speak.

Find Out — Fast

When something goes wrong with your product or service, you must know the details. Find out, as soon as you can:

• what is the problem
• why did it happen
• when will it be fixed
• what you can do to mitigate problems for the customer while it is fixed

If you are armed with this knowledge you can effectively communicate to your customers and help alleviate their concerns. Based on when the problem will be fixed, you’ll need to offer alternatives to your customers.

When you fail to assess and inform yourself of the problem situation, you’ll alienate and lose customers. They’ll feel you are apathetic to their needs and will find someone else who does care.

I drove through a torrential downpour on my way to work this morning. As I was stopped at an intersection across from a hospital, I saw that their sprinklers were watering the grass. I could barely make out the sprinkler water through the constant downpour that pelted my windshield.

Do you see the irony in this? It may seem funny until you realize you probably do the same thing in your business. You may be letting your sprinklers run during a rainstorm if:

• Two teams in your company are working on the same project deliverable but have no idea the other team exists.
• You’re working hard to create a product that can be purchased for less or is free somewhere else.
• Schedules don’t take into consideration work that has been done or that will be done soon.
• Your company has as a project that, when finished, won’t give the customer any added benefit from what they already have.

Take a look at your business. Are you duplicating effort needlessly?

The sprinklers work great when there hasn’t been any rain. Are you coordinating your schedule and being timely with your deliverables?

Every customer you encounter has concerns. Doing business with you is risky. We’ve discussed how to mitigate these risks before, but today let’s talk about how we can address customers’ unspoken concerns.

According to Selling the Invisible, customers often hide their concerns and leave them unspoken. At the same time, you’ll see recurring patterns of questions and problems that arise with your customers.

Make a List

Sit down and make a list of common concerns that people have when doing business with you. These may have come up in your discussions with customers or with your employees.

For each concern come up with a way to resolve the issue. For example, if you install gutters, the customer may be worried about the workmanship after you leave. Resolution: tell them that if anything goes wrong with the installation after you’re done, that you’ll come back and fix the problem for free.

Preemptive Resolutions

After you’ve made your list of concerns and resolutions you now need to focus on communicating that to your customers. Remember, they don’t always tell you their concerns. You need to mention your resolutions as part of the benefits of your service or product. List them out in your conversation or marketing materials.

When a customer hears your resolutions they will internalize them, eliminating their concerns without a word spoken on their part.

The trick is to sneak in the concern resolutions and not wait for the customer to express doubts. If you’re waiting for the customer, you may never hear their concerns.

Don’t Mention the Problem

Not all your customers will have the same concerns. You don’t want to plant concerns in their heads. Therefore when explaining the resolutions we discussed above, keep your conversation positive and don’t highlight all the things that could go wrong.

With our gutter example above, simply state your work is guaranteed. If anything goes wrong, you’ll fix it. Don’t list out all the ways the gutters can fail.

Keep your resolutions positive and don’t dwell on problems.

Put it in Practice

Anticipate your customer’s doubts, problems, and concerns so you can resolve them without mentioning the problems themselves. This will make your customers more comfortable with your business and they will be more likely to buy.

Buy this book

Things don’t always go like you hoped. Your website will be used by different types of people from various backgrounds. You must prepare and make their online experience with you as pleasant as possible. This includes gracefully recovering when visitors encounter problems.

Defensive Design for the Web comes to us from the ingenious people at 37Signals. I’ve praised their innovative products here before because they have created a wonderful user experience. This book passes along some of their expert knowledge in an easy to read format.

Defensive Design includes screenshots of websites with analysis of what works and what doesn’t. Forty key points are covered that can help you create an online experience that effectively handles the bumps in the road.

Take a look at this book and I’m sure you’ll find at least a handful of things you need to fix on your website.

Read more Defensive Design reviews on amazon.com

Buy Defensive Design for the Web on Amazon.com »

I heard from James and Richard asking me if I really got the cruise I mentioned in my timeshare shenanigans story. The short answer is yes. We even got a “tropical vacation getaway” in addition to our cruise.

On our drive home my wife was reading the details to me and I soon realized that we had wasted our entire Saturday. There are numerous restrictions and hoops to jump through to make our travel happen. Because of this, it will
be more expensive to use our “free” prizes than to make our own travel arrangements!

The cruise includes a bunk bed cabin on the inside of the ship. We’d also need to get from our home in Austin, Texas to Los Angeles or Miami to catch our cruise. Why we couldn’t just drive down to the Gulf Coast to catch our boat is beyond me!

The tropical vacation getaway was good for hotel stay for 4 nights on any of several island locations from the Caribbean to Hawaii. We’d have to make our own travel arrangements to reach these destinations.

Both of these packages were handled through Spirit Incentives which added their own lengthy process for getting our free vacations. We’d have to:

• Select 3 valid dates during the off season. These are at least 30 days apart and not within a week of major holidays.
• Mail in our request at least 60 days before earliest departure
• Send in a deposit to cover taxes and fees
• We’ll be notified between 45 to 60 days prior to our accepted travel date

Unfortunately these requirements demand great flexibility in our ability to travel almost anytime. Plus the hidden costs to even make these “free” trips comfortable and feasible lead us to believe we could get a better deal ourselves.

The hype and marketing around our free prizes appears to be nothing short of deception. Companies must remember to be honest and straightforward with customers by giving them all the information upfront.