Ask not what your customers can do for you

Interviewing candidates helps me better crystalize my own philosophy on the way to think about and work with customers.

I've been asking for scenarios when there is tension or an issue with a customer and a product, and then I listen to their gut reaction. I listen for their perspective on where change needs to come from. Some people say that the customer needs education, guidance, a carrot, or stick to behave the "right" way.

That's a red flag. Their perspective is that the product the customer is interacting with shouldn't (or can't) change, and that the customer needs to bend to make it work for how the company operates. It also means the candidate's manner in a tense conversation will be defensive, which always leads to more escalation and issues.

Whether that comes from egotism, or training at other companies, it essentially boils down to the playground exchange of:

"You're stupid."

"No, you're stupid."

This is going nowhere.

It's the opposite of hospitality. Those candidates get the reject email.

Candidates that advance take a Kennedy-eque approach. Ask not what your customer can do for you, but what you can do for your customer. Their gut reaction is that there's a problem and we, the company, need to change and fix it.

Problems don't arise from nothing. They come from decisions made by us at the company to manifest it. And that means we have the ability and the power to rethink those decisions to eliminate problems that we created for our customers.

Solving problems is easier said than done. The decisions that made the issue were made by smart people thinking deep about how to get something done. Processes were created and features launched to make it happen. Long hours and lots of coffee go into bringing it to life. And then ... customers get a thorn in their side.

But why? The issue or the cause aren't always clear. Which is why I especially love candidates that are curious to find out why something isn't working.

Candidates don't need to have the answer. In fact jumping straight to a solution can be a sign of egotism or anxiety to talk to customers. The candidates that ask follow up questions, whose knee-jerk reaction is to call customers, and to explore the dark corners of negative feedback are the ones I want to keep the conversation going. And they get invited to the next round.