Okay, so a few people have asked how you spot the where your Trust Thermocline is, and how to avoid hitting it. I'll give you the same answer I give senior execs:
I don't know.
But the people working on the ground level in the customer-facing sections of your company do. /1
Because it's those people that will be picking up on the general vibe of your userbase and their 'grumbles' - i.e. the complaints that the user shoulders internally (mostly) rather than makes directly in feedback.
So its your creators, your community managers, junior sales etc.
But the BIGGEST sign you are at risk of hitting your Truth Thermocline, if you are a relatively large company, is this:
Do you have a customer retention process? Do you have a sales retention TEAM? Do you have a customer retention DEPARTMENT?
Alarm bells.
There's this odd thing where companies with a trust problem start to treat retention as a normalised process. And a 'good' retention rate as an indicator of success.
It isn't.
It means you have growing trust issues with your userbase and are DELAYING your issue, not fixing it.
Do you know what's really effing fun?
Sticking people who do the retention calls in a room, with a white board, and lots of GOOD food and drink, and getting them to list all the stuff they CONSTANTLY hear but have stopped bothering to report up the chain.
And you record it. Or you just take everything on that list.
And you go:
That's your trust problem right there. However painful it is to your bottom line. However politically tough it is. However complex the problem:
Fix that shit.
Or you don't have a company anymore.
It's basically that old joke about how consultants just tell execs what those on the ground know already.
Which is why I don't do consultancy. I'm happy to just do sessions for senior execs and either they listen and talk to the right people, or were never going to listen anyway
And 9 times out of 10 the real reason none of that stuff has been addressed before was simply because it was seen as too hard to be worth the effort.
Either they start realising its worth the effort, or no 6 month consultancy was gonna change their mind.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.