Calculated decision or a bet? Prediction or intuition?
We all make decisions and then take actions, but are they based on facts? Feelings? Assumptions? All of them together?
When it comes to customer management, should we play "safe" and gather sufficient information before responding to a client? Or should we rely on our experience and intuition? Do we take any bets when engaging with customers?
Decisions are the outcome of our human operating system. Fortunately, we can control, optimize, and improve our thinking.
This can unlock multiple benefits for us.
Raise our awareness of the multiple options we have during decision-making.
Increase our confidence to make decisions based on partial data.
Improve our self-assessment of the risks we may encounter before taking action.
Allow more flexibility and agility, knowing the limitations of our decision-making process.
You can select the most suitable decision-making option considering your natural skills, strengths, and circumstances.
Let's review these decision-making options quickly and offer practical tips to prepare for our next customer interaction.
Calculated decision
A calculated decision is the choice we make after reviewing and analyzing the relevant information, weighing the upsides and downsides, potential risks and benefits, and considering various possible outcomes. This decision-making is intentional to ensure the most informed and rational choice.
In reality, we hardly ever make a 100% calculated decision, as there is always a degree of uncertainty. When dealing with customers, we are expected to know their plans, budgets, internal issues, expectations, etc. But we hardly have a clear view of the entire customer landscape.
It would be more accurate to say that we make our decisions, but the majority are based on less-than-perfect data.
Prediction
A prediction is an outcome we expect to achieve in the future based on current knowledge, data, trends, and our experience.
When making a prediction, we also assign (directly or indirectly) a certain probability reflecting our confidence in our assessment.
For example, when predicting customer churn, we explore the available dataset, incorporate our professional assessment of the engagement, and consider our previous experience and how customers and stakeholders reacted in similar circumstances.
We predict because we miss certain information when attempting to make a calculated decision. The more data we have, the more confident we are in taking the necessary steps and following a playbook to mitigate the churn risk and retain the customer.
Intuition
It is our natural ability to understand or know something without conscious reasoning and substantiated data. We often describe it as a "gut feeling" or an instinctive reaction.
Intuition can be based on the subconscious mind, reverting to past experiences, emotions, and implicit knowledge. With no analytical process in place, decisions we make because of intuition are quick and require minimum effort.
When a client asks me a surprising question, I use my intuition. I quickly decide whether to respond or ask for more time to get back. There is a very short time to assess if, at that moment, it is better to improvise and provide a partial answer or encounter a risk by taking more time to respond.
A Bet
A situation in which an individual risks something of value (money) due to the outcome of a highly uncertain event.
When we bet on something, we make a conscious decision based on the probability we assign to different outcomes and the potential reward vs. risk.
Do we make bets when engaging with customers?
We usually have a certain degree of data to make a more informed decision or prediction than betting.
The one example that “feels like a bet" is when we engage the stakeholders we hope will be successful and get promoted. However, it is a "semi-bet" as we have some background knowledge about the person and the organization, and one can perceive our decision to be based on prediction.
The significant upside is when the stakeholder has an outstanding track record (with our support), gets promoted, and starts opening more doors for us, improving our visibility within the organization and enabling more opportunities to expand engagement.
Tips:
🔑 Intuition is a great asset when you have experienced similar situations before.
Example: I would not face an angry customer and improvise when I have never experienced customer escalation. In this case, I would ask for more time to analyze the situation and make informed decisions before responding.
🔑 Prediction is an effective tool when you have partial information and must take action to get customers back on track.
Example: onboarding process that is expected to go the wrong way and having to predict earlier signs of potential churn.
🔑 It is easier to make calculated decisions knowing you have data to support it. Such data will reside in your CRM, CS management platform, and support tool.
Examples: propose a customer to upgrade to a higher service tier based on their usage, or propose premium SLA based on the customer's ticket history.
🔑 In most cases, we have some data about our clients to avoid bets. We can rely on our experience, common sense and support from manager/colleagues to make good predictions or calculated decision. If you enjoy betting, you'd better keep it to your next visit to the casino.
Customers are different.
Stakeholders have unique characters.
Circumstances change and require different decision-making processes.
The conclusion is that we need to be flexible in evaluating our decision options. Hence having this capability to combine on data analysis, experience, sound judgement will support well-rounded decisions, whether they are based on data, intuition or prediction.
Balancing these elements leads to more informed, agile, and creative decision-making, promoting success and innovation in continuously changing markets.
Being able to adjust your decision-making process is a great skill set to improve on your way to become an outstanding professional and becoming a version of yourself.
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