Why You Need to Experience “Client Mode”

The man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s statement is mostly true, but let’s not lose sight of another critical truism of professional life: nobody in business or in the professions must ever forget what it’s like to be on the receiving end. From time to time, every chef needs to eat in someone else’s restaurant.

This notion is related to house-blindness, the phenomenon that you don’t notice your worn carpets because, well, they’ve always been there. Sometimes you need to visit around a bit so that you notice defects in your home to which you’d grown blind.

All the large chains employ “secret shoppers” who visit individual stores to make purchases, whether of a Big Mac or a kitchen range, often posing as the “difficult customer” to see how they are treated. Small businesses and solo practitioners don’t have this luxury, but they can still walk in the shoes of their client to understand the client experience.

What matters is the mindset. It’s a variation of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. When you consume someone else’s services with the mindset of “what can I learn here to improve my offerings?” you’ll never fail to take lessons to improve your own delivery.

Many years ago I received an expert opinion from a psychiatrist. He had written a report for one of my clients and soon called by way of follow up. He invited me to drop by his office, which I did. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled like Starbucks, only better. His assistant served me, in fine china, perhaps the most exquisite coffee I’ve ever had. Apparently he selected, roasted, and ground his own beans.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I went back to the shop and bought a two thousand dollar Gaggia, but it does mean that we upgraded significantly and thereafter never, never, never offered clients stale, sludgy coffee with powdered Whale Whip. It was at least coffee shop quality, usually better. Clients noticed.

What happens when we sit on the other side of the desk is that we suffer the same anxieties that our clients suffer when they are in our client chairs: “How much is this going to cost?” “Can I put this off?” “How long will this take?” “Is there a simpler, or a shorter, way?” “When can you start?” and a hundred other questions, all driven by the anxiety to solve a pressing problem.

As producers, it’s important for us to experience “the little chair” and think like consumers so that when we sit “in the big chair” we’re sensitive to the unspoken needs and wants of our clients.

(Check out this article (https://mailchi.mp/121c7c64b5be/resolution-for-1360221?e=[UNIQID) from several years ago: Why You Need a Progress Bar.)