TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:02.720
So this is the same business as episode three.
00:00:03.040 --> 00:00:04.879
This is Jamie and Claire.
00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:09.439
They fix their form problem, and leads are landing with the right people.
00:00:09.599 --> 00:00:14.160
The sales team is talking to prospects, and customer care is talking to clients.
00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:18.000
In week one, this is what Jamie found.
00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:22.239
With the form's problem fixed, leads are landing with the right people.
00:00:22.399 --> 00:00:26.160
Customer care is talking to clients, sales is talking to prospects.
00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:36.159
And then a deal closes, and the sales rep pulls up their notes, detailed, thorough, everything about this client from the first conversation to the signed contract.
00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:38.159
They fill out a handoff form.
00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:41.759
The form sends an email to the implementation team manager.
00:00:42.159 --> 00:00:48.079
The manager opens the email, reads the notes, and enters everything manually into their own system.
00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:53.119
It's a second program that was set up by implementation in the way they needed it.
00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:55.439
They assign the project to a team member.
00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:57.840
The team member started their work.
00:00:58.159 --> 00:01:01.280
A few weeks later, implementation wraps up.
00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:05.519
They fill out their own completion form, and another email goes out.
00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:07.519
This time to customer success.
00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:13.680
Customer success opens it, reads the summary, and enters the relevant details into a third program.
00:01:14.799 --> 00:01:20.560
Three teams, each one careful, thorough, and doing exactly what they were supposed to do.
00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:27.599
And every single time information moved between them, someone had to type it in again from scratch.
00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:29.439
The information existed.
00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:31.519
It just wasn't traveling.
00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:35.040
I'm Sarah Robinson, and this is the obvious myth.
00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:42.079
For anyone who's ever felt like their business should be performing better than it is and suspects that the answer isn't more leads.
00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:45.760
Here's what this myth is about.
00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:49.519
As long as it's written down somewhere, we're covered.
00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:52.000
And honestly, it sounds right.
00:01:52.239 --> 00:01:53.519
It sounds responsible.
00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:57.280
We're taking notes, keeping records, and documenting the client journey.
00:01:57.519 --> 00:01:59.200
That's what good teams do.
00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:02.239
And this team was doing it.
00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:03.599
Everyone was doing it.
00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:08.560
Sales had records, implementation had records, customer success had records.
00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:13.039
But here's what written down somewhere actually means in practice.
00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:19.759
It means the information exists, but it doesn't mean that the business can use it.
00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:33.840
Every time a client's information moved from one team to the next, it had to be manually re-entered, which means it was reinterpreted, resummarized, and sometimes abbreviated because one form or the other only had so many fields.
00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:44.319
Sometimes just slightly wrong, because humans make small errors when they're copying data from one system to another for the fourth time this week.
00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:47.919
And over time, those small errors compound.
00:02:48.080 --> 00:03:06.240
The customer success team is working from a summary of a summary, the original context, the specific thing the client said in the first sales call that explains everything about how they need to be served is a couple of handoffs back in a system the customer success team doesn't have access to.
00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:13.280
Written down somewhere isn't the same as available everywhere when it's needed.
00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:20.479
And available everywhere it's needed isn't the same as automatically surfaced at exactly the right moment.
00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:24.719
The myth is that documentation is the solution.
00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:32.400
The truth is that documentation without a system to move it between teams is just really well organized friction.
00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:36.879
And here's what I mean when I say organized friction.
00:03:37.439 --> 00:03:39.039
A person can know something.
00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:41.680
Sometimes a team can even know something.
00:03:41.919 --> 00:03:56.240
But the business, the entire entity that serves a client at scale, consistently, regardless of who's in the room, only knows what's accessible, shareable, and actionable inside the system everyone is working from.
00:03:56.479 --> 00:03:58.240
Everything else is tribal.
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:00.800
And tribal knowledge has a shelf life.
00:04:01.039 --> 00:04:05.919
It works when the person who holds it is available, paying attention, and remembers.
00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:10.000
It breaks when they're on vacation, overwhelmed, or gone.
00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:14.879
This client wasn't losing information because people were being careless.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:23.600
They were losing it in transit, in the gap between one system and the next, every time a human had to bridge the gap manually.
00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:28.639
Each manual re-entry was a chance for the information to degrade.
00:04:28.879 --> 00:04:33.759
Each summary was a layer of interpretation between the original truth and the team that needed it.
00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:44.240
And by the time customer success was trying to serve a client well, they were working from a version of the story that had been filtered through two other teams' understanding of what mattered.
00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:48.560
The fix wasn't complicated, although it was a lot of work.
00:04:48.879 --> 00:04:56.879
We moved everyone into one system, HubSpot, and built the handoffs around deal stages instead of emails.
00:04:57.199 --> 00:05:06.480
When sales marked a deal as closed one, the information moved to implementation automatically, whole, not summarized, not re-entered.
00:05:06.639 --> 00:05:10.079
The original notes, the original context, the full picture.
00:05:10.399 --> 00:05:14.720
Right there, waiting for the implementation team when they open the record.
00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:20.079
Implementation started being assigned manually based on team capacity.
00:05:20.399 --> 00:05:22.560
No manager manually routing the work.
00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:24.639
So we didn't have email chains.
00:05:25.199 --> 00:05:34.480
When implementation marks the project complete, customer success had everything they needed before the handoff email could have even been written.
00:05:35.519 --> 00:05:43.519
And if something was wrong, if a record was incomplete or a previous team had missed something, there was a process to escalate it back up the chain.
00:05:43.759 --> 00:05:48.800
Checks built into the system, not dependent on someone remembering to ask.
00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:52.399
We didn't change our teams.
00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:07.839
Before episode five, here's a question I want to leave you with.
00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:10.639
Think about your client or customer journey.
00:06:10.879 --> 00:06:20.240
From the first time someone expresses interest to the moment they've been with you long enough to renew or refer, how many times does their information have to be re-entered along the way?
00:06:21.199 --> 00:06:29.519
Maybe it's copy and pasted, maybe it's manually re-entered, typed in again by a human who's interpreting what matters from what came before.
00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:42.160
Every one of those moments is a place where information degrades, where context gets lost, where the person serving your client next has a slightly less complete picture than the person who served them last.
00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:44.240
Find one of those moments.
00:06:44.560 --> 00:06:45.279
Just one.
00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:49.680
Because that's not a documentation problem, that's a system problem.
00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:53.040
And system problems have system solutions.
00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:57.040
That's it for episode four.
00:06:57.360 --> 00:07:06.560
If you're starting to see where information is getting lost in transit in your own business, the revenue leak quick check will help you pinpoint exactly where.
00:07:07.439 --> 00:07:10.480
It takes five minutes, and the link is in the description.
00:07:11.120 --> 00:07:19.439
Episode five is next, and it's about a client whose customers genuinely loved her, but they kept leaving anyways.
00:07:19.759 --> 00:07:24.160
And not because they wanted to, but because no one was reminding them to stay.