{"id":4345,"date":"2016-10-24T21:53:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T20:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=4345"},"modified":"2023-02-09T16:34:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T16:34:52","slug":"how-to-say-no-politely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/how-to-say-no-politely\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s One Bulletproof Way To Politely To Tell Your Customers \u201cNo\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s a growing feel-good<\/span> philosophy in customer support<\/span><\/a> that manages to be both enormously unhelpful and ineffective at once:\u00a0\u201cWhen you want to be honest and helpful, there are situations when you need to say \u201cno\u201d and make it clear.\u201d<\/span>

In other words, hang up on your customer…politely?<\/span>

I can\u2019t imagine how we would have ever built a customer base at ProdPad if we took that kind of advice. Telling a customer ‘no’, or what you can\u2019t or won\u2019t do for them is not customer success. It\u2019s lazy customer support.<\/span>

At ProdPad, we don\u2019t see customer requests <\/span>as something to be accepted or denied<\/span><\/a>. We don\u2019t even use the word \u201cno\u201d with our customers. We process every request that comes our way as: <\/span>

a.) An opportunity to educate our customers <\/strong>

b.) Feedback for us<\/strong>

Then we use that to either to<\/span> communicate what we can do for them<\/span><\/a> and how we can solve their problem or log it as feedback to help us improve our product.<\/span>

There is a constructive space in between \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno\u201d – here\u2019s how we\u2019re using it to grow our business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serve up an order of options <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If anyone would have to say \u201cnope, sorry\u201d a lot, it\u2019s me. <\/span>

People come to ProdPad expecting the same project management features they see in <\/span>all the other product roadmap tools they\u2019re looking into<\/span><\/a>. And when they don\u2019t find it, they email us: <\/span>

\u201cHey, where can I set up a timeline or a Gantt chart on my roadmap?\u201d<\/span>

I could answer that in one of two ways:

Option 1:<\/b>

\u201cNo sorry, we don\u2019t have Gantt charts because that falls under release planning and project management. Our software doesn\u2019t support these functions.\u201d<\/span><\/em>

Option 2:<\/b>

\u201cHi Lance,<\/span><\/i>

Thanks for getting in touch!<\/span><\/i>

We don’t have dates on our roadmap, as we find it helps keep the purpose of the roadmap focused. <\/span><\/i>

The roadmap is meant to show you which areas of focus (sometimes called Themes in the Agile world) you’ll be working on at various time intervals.) We stick to the time horizons of ‘Current’, ‘Near Term’ and ‘Future’ (though these can be renamed) as they are more appropriate for a roadmap than a 4-quarter style or detailed release plan. We wrote a little about this here:<\/span><\/i>

– <\/span><\/i>Roadmapping without dates<\/span><\/i><\/a>

– <\/span><\/i>How to build a product roadmap everyone understands<\/span><\/i><\/a>

Essentially, we’re differentiating between a roadmap and a Gantt chart, which is project management functionality that we don’t touch. Instead, we integrate with a bunch of great tools, like JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, Rally, etc. which do make for great project management tools!<\/span><\/i>

That being said, once they’ve been completed, adding a date and allowing for a field where you can write some details about the project.\u201d<\/span><\/i>

Which one do you think does better? Option 2 routinely gets us customers who respond thoughtfully back:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n