The reason why I say ‘No’ to my customers

and they thank me for it

When you start working in a new office usually you are nicer than normal, very polite, very educated and at times a bit submissive. From what I have gathered you don’t want to be the person that becomes annoying or disliked the first week you’re in.

The same thing happens with customers… The old saying comes to mind…

The customer is always right.

If you want to apply that saying, normally you would agree (at least to his face) with everything he says, requests, complains, etc.

I have to disagree, very early in my career I had to deal with various types of customers (both internal and external) — and I have seen a few. In a way I feel my relationship with my customers is like parenting, and even without them liking it I have to deny things that they ask for. Like that new bike you wanted for the holidays some years ago, remember?

This is why it works, and this is the way to correctly apply it.

1. Build an honest relationship with your customers. The best way to build a great relationship with your customer is by connecting with them and allowing yourself to look more as a friend than just that annoying guy for Company X. A friend with limitations of course, you just want them close enough for you to be able to become a voice of reason.
2. When you say ‘No’, back it up. Just like we hated when our parents said no, with the beautiful reason “because I said so!”, customers do not enjoy when something is denied to them without any reason. Be sure to justify all of your recommendations, and be sure to back up with data, a lot of data and very important — the data must be understood by different areas within the company — sometimes we interact with the commercial team, but they need the validation from the technical guys or the financial team, so you need to accomodate the information for all of those teams, always ask them to whom the information is important.
3. Admit it when they are right, or the least liked… admit when you are wrong. We might be the experts, they are just buying the product, but sometimes they are very clever and they can be so very right about some things; and you had a slow week and made a blunder. Admit it, back up and fix it — but never forget to give recognition to whomever called it out, because just as we did we were young we really enjoyed being recognized for doing something good.

There are more things that can be applied, but those are the ones I have tested in my relationship with my customers and they work, we trust each other and they understand that when I say ‘no’, I do it keeping the best intentions in mind, for there are some things that are not convenient for them. It pays off, when you have trust of those what work with you.