Whose Customer Is It?

Consider these three scenarios: Each one is a recent example of when customer service goes wrong or very right!

1.      The client who is furious because they booked back-to-back voyages, but the advisor forgot to make the payment and they ended up in two separate cabins. Now the client wants answers, but the advisor won’t respond, so the owner has stepped in.

2.      The advisor who pipes up, claiming that the lead you gave to another advisor is “my client,” even though she hadn’t reached out in two years.

3.      The advisor who received a bottle of hand-pressed extra virgin olive oil, a recipe, and a personal thank-you note from a client who had just returned from their dream cruise to Croatia and a tour of a farmhouse where the family had been pressing olive oil for generations. “Life-changing” is all the note said.

As leaders, we all know a customer relationship can be either neglected, nurtured or earned. We all want a team of Advisor #3: the advisor who delivers indispensable service. Clients return again and again, and bring their friends.

The difference in the third scenario wasn’t simply better customer service. The difference is customer intimacy.

When an advisor becomes deeply curious about every aspect of a client’s travel lifestyle—their wants, hopes, and unspoken needs—they reach a level of trust that works both ways.

Clients trust them with their plans, booking logistics, and money. They have also earned the trust to work through challenges—even when things don’t go their way. We all make mistakes—it’s how those mistakes are handled. When you shift from customer knowledge to customer intimacy, you learn the best way to share tough news and how to co-create a contingency plan that can often become a happy silver lining.

Some advisors have a contact list. Others have a list of lifetime customers and a deep understanding of how they choose to be served. When you build towards that, the question of whose customer it is becomes joyfully clear.

What is the state of your contact list. Is it filled with names, addresses and phone numbers? Or is it deeper than that?

I’d love to hear what you think separates customer knowledge from customer intimacy. What important details help advisors gain trust and create loyal, lifetime clients?