I love it when ideas from another industry make sense for contracts.
Gavin Scott of Loaf training was talking at the Professional Speaking Association about customer service. He said that 34% of client loyalty comes from being easy to deal with.
Lightbulb!
Contracts are one of the first elements of customer service (as they mark the change between being a prospect and being a customer).
What should you do?
So what does the ‘make it easy‘ mean for contracts? This HBR article says that you should:
- head off issues (your contract should explain how you will quickly and fairly deal with dissatisfied customers, perhaps with a money-back guarantee?)
- consider the emotional impact of what you do on your customers (your contract should be both legally intelligent and emotionally intelligent too)
- minimise customer confusion (your contract should be simple)
- get feedback to make it even easier next time (we are doing this in a project to revise the contract suite for the Federation of Master Builders – asking members what would make it easy for them)
- deliver a low-effort experience (create one simple single document which you can email to clients and get a reply which seals the deal, rather than getting dragged into a battle of the forms).
Why make the process of contracting difficult as well as the content?
