Identifying and AVOIDING problematic disputes

Identify and Deal with Problematic Business Relations (or Prepare to Litigate) Business relationships are like gardens, they take planning to work, require care and often must be weeded or repaired. Sales people tout that 90% of your future revenues will derive from your existing customers so one should do a better job communicating with existing customers for new business. The same may be said about risk. More risk exists from your existing relationships than from the likelihood that some third-party will raise a dispute.

Action Plan: Few ever think of having a plan in the event things with a customer, supplier or partner show signs of a problem. We can all easily point to the signs -- instantly returned emails yesterday go unanswered for an odd amount of time, the tone of their voice changes, new people show up being ccd, hesitations appear everywhere. We all depend on others to run our business and problems are inevitable. Talk internally about an action plan in the event a problem arises. Do not wait until it becomes a dispute.

1) Problem owners. Identify the key person in your organization that should own customer, partner, supplier organizations. Teach active listening in your company. I attended a most useful training that focused on non-verbal communication. Identify a small chain of people internally that should provide input, information and contribute to a decision about problems. The goal should almost always be to diffuse them. If you can empower your most-customer facing employee to resolve simple issues do it. There is no better feeling on the basic level when the customer service representative says "I am sorry for the trouble, I would like to offer you a credit of that fee." You know as a customer what good customer service feels like. Use those experiences as your guide.

2) Solve easy problems quickly. You are running a business, you are not running a litigation practice (leave that to me). Identify easy problems quickly and solve them. The message should almost always be, "we are sorry about what happened and we want to work with you, let us look at how to fix it." Naive you say? I beg to differ. Ownership if problems is the quickest way to avoid a dispute. I am not advising you to take responsibility or to accept blame where it is not due (or to take it at all). I am asking you to connect with your customer, partner, supplier on a human level. Remember, these are disputes with entities and people with whom you chose to do business. Of course, as we do business we often learn that the relationship is not perfect. Breathe. Identify the simple problems and get rid of them. There are more important things to do on your to do list!

3) The difficult balance. When a customers server goes down on your watch there is a difficult balance between repairing the problem and documenting caused the crash. If you plan now about how to set those priorities, both goals can be accomplished.

4) Know when to change gears. Things get bad quickly so do not be caught unprepared. Read the signs and prepare yourself and your organization. How will you document damages? How will they? Do you have a document retention policy? How should you talk about disputes over email internally as they brew? How about instant messaging technologies? Do your customer facing employees use them with customers and if so, what types of things should and should not be said?