I got a phone call from a customer in the process of selling his house and he wanted to put us in touch with the new homeowners, indicating they were interested in taking over both security and the 24/7 remote support subscriptions. I was excited because this client had gone out of their way to make sure that we had enough information to transfer the account from seller to buyer. We always want to make sure to preserve a services relationship whenever possible because recurring monthly revenue is the lifeblood of any business. At moments like these, I try to bend over backward to make sure that we make these situations happen smoothly (sometimes at the expense of our own rules).
I always try to think through the eyes of the customer, often at the expense of our own comfort. Our job is to obsess over customer pain points and try to anticipate them as best we can. While I’d love to think my own psychotic obsession with this mindset is universal, I know that we all show up to work for different reasons. That’s not bad. It just means that it takes all different types of personalities to make the ship go. In this case, the seller was abroad and needed to transfer and authorize everything remotely. Our normal workflow is to have paper (yes, I said paper) copies of security monitoring contracts signed off on in person before we can transact business. I had not really tuned into this fact since I’ve stayed out of parts of our business that I should clearly pay more attention to. I remarked to our team that it was 2024 and couldn’t we do this electronically and make it easier for the clients? I was met with some pushback by a few of our employees who insisted that we needed to have a signature on a piece of paper (nevermind that the piece of paper is summarily scanned and emailed to the central station).
Also by Henry Clifford: Content Is King
Rules-based thinking didn’t mean our folks weren’t doing their jobs, but it did give me pause. I thought it was an opportunity for us to lift our heads and tweak things a little bit. Could we, for example, create an electronic signature version of the same agreement that could be emailed and also be compliant with any applicable regulations? I got some buy in that they would look into it. I did a little digging myself and managed to get an electronic copy of the old-school paper monitoring agreement sent over as a PDF. Within a few more hours our team had put together a solution that allowed for electronic sign-off and all ended well with happy customers on both sides. I think we also have a new workflow that we can use from time to time, which might prove useful in the case of remote customers. Our standard security monitoring workflow is still probably easier for 90% of our other jobs, which will continue to be an in-person sign-off on a monitoring agreement (in this case, scanning the paper zone list is faster than filling out an electronic form).
This solution required curiosity and obsession with customer pain points. It started making me wonder to what degree we are rewarding and incentivizing creative thinking. One of my mentors rewarded what he called “white rabbit” ideas in his organization as quick and easy solutions to thorny business issues. I think we could use something like that at Livewire and I’m looking forward to implementing that in the new year. What are you doing in your business to incentivize and praise curiosity?
Stay frosty, and see you in the field.
