I’ve have had the privilege of having several great mentors over the years . One of them was a true gentleman, Flavil Q. Van Dyke III (Van), a former IBM executive and then the CEO at Genigraphics, a pioneering company within the computer presentation graphics industry, and a board member at a leading ERP reseller, JGI.

One of the key mentoring points that I learned from Van was about asking the right questions. For software and services providers, customer satisfaction is key. We want and need our customers to be happy for repeat business as well as to maintain solid references for new business.

It’s hard to hear bad news. We always want to hear good news. We form our customer satisfaction questions in a way to get good answers. “How are things going?” “How did we do today?” “Are you happy?”

It’s hard to deliver bad news. We always want to provide good feedback.   So customer answers are “Great!” “Terrific!” “Yes!” But are they really happy?

When we ask our questions, they need to be designed to get to the information we need to hear. We want to know that our customer is truly happy and we want to know if there are opportunities for us to improve our business.

Here is Van’s example that expands upon the poor service restaurant scene from one of my all-time favorite business books, “Raving Fans”. This really illustrates the point.

The Scene:

My beautiful wife, Christine and I go out for a nice, romantic dinner at a new restaurant. The wait staff is professional and attentive. The main course was terrific, but something didn’t feel right about the overall experience. We couldn’t figure out what it was, specifically. Before dessert, the waiter asks, “How was your meal?” We say “Fine”. He smiles, leaves the check and he walks away – we feel good, he feels good. We may go back to that restaurant again, we may not.

Repeat The Scene:

Christine and I go out for a nice, romantic dinner at a new restaurant. The wait staff is professional and attentive. The main course was terrific, but something didn’t feel right about the overall experience. We couldn’t figure out what it was specifically. Before dessert, the waiter asks, “How was your meal?” We say “Good”. He then says, “Is there anything we could have done to improve your overall experience?” Our initial, polite response is “No, not really.” He probes further – “Is there just one thing that we could improve on?” This question makes us pause, and contemplate the overall meal, and it dawns on us. “We love Caesar Salad, but tonight, the lettuce was wilted.” He nods, apologizes for the wilted lettuce but thanks us for our honest feedback – we feel great, he feels great because the rest of the night’s dinner guests, and those that follow, will most certainly have fresh, crisp lettuce. We order dessert, and they comp our cappuccinos because of the wilted lettuce. We will most definitely go back to that restaurant again, and recommend it to our friends and family because they care about improving their business.