Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

THE TRUTH CAN NEVER HURT YOU: PRACTICE FULL DISCLOSURE

A piece of practical advice when giving women an optimal customer experience: no matter what your product or service is, practice full disclosure. Don’t ever try to misrepresent what your business or product or service can do. Women will find out if you “fudge” on your capabilities, and trust will be eroded at best or lost entirely at worst. It’s not necessary to try to paint a better or enhanced picture of your product or service anyway. Women can handle the truth, even when you’re telling them about a product shortcoming. What they can’t handle—and strongly dislike—is the runaround or the feeling that a company has deceived them or given inaccurate information.

Here’s an example: one of my clients is a female executive at a large electrical supply company and she travels extensively. She recently switched mobile phone providers, and in the process of shopping around for the right plan for her needs, she found that almost every carrier touted their extensive, “flawless” network of coverage. The reality is that no one carrier has perfect coast-to-coast coverage. Some have more than others, but all have areas with weak, spotty, or virtually nonexistent coverage. Yet every salesperson she encountered boasted that his or her company’s coverage was the best in the universe. My friend was skeptical, because she knew there was no way that this could be true. All she wanted was someone to give her the straight story so she could make ...