Creating $100k+ Questions: Don't Settle For The Problem You've Been Given

The mediocre consultant receives a problem from a client and solves it. The elite consultant questions and explores the issue in depth. Here are three questions to ask before you get to work.

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Why Was One Customer Support Channel Performing So Poorly?

How We Focused On The Real Problem

A client once approached us to improve the customer satisfaction scores they were getting through their support channel. Out of all the support channels (phone, email, knowledge base, etc…), the community had the poorest satisfaction scores as measured by a pop-up survey.

We can use some standard levers to try and improve these scores. We can improve response times in the community, the quality of responses, or the ease of navigating the site. But what really interested us is why the scores were the lowest of any channel in the first place.

Was the community's experience really that bad, or was it simply attracting the least satisfied customers?

We ignored the aggregate scores and began looking at the qualitative feedback. We discovered that the scores were being dragged down by people with unsolvable problems (i.e. There wasn’t a fix, and they needed to purchase a new product).

But wouldn’t other support channels also have people with the same problems? Why was the community attracting the majority of these?

We began taking unsolvable problems in the community to other support channels to see what would happen. We discovered that if the support rep couldn't resolve the issue at the end of a support call (and support emails), they advised the customer to post their answer in the community because ‘maybe they would get an answer there’.

It didn’t take long to realise this wasn’t done with good intentions. The support rep (alongside most other support channels) dumped people with unsolvable problems into the community to boost their own ratings at the expense of the community.

Once we learned this, we set up a meeting with the VP of support and structured a new question;

How do we create a better means of showing the relative performance of each channel and the overall improvement of customer support (without departments dumping their worst cases on each other)?

That’s a $100k+ question. And one we worked with them to solve.

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Don’t Settle For The Problem You’ve Been Given

Ask questions to create better questions

We’ve talked before about the problem with giving clients what they want.

It’s almost a cliche that a consultant responds to a question with a question.

But that’s often precisely what the client needs. Most clients are deep in the weeds of their work. It’s hard for them to look up and see if you’re on the right path for the right reasons.

I’d estimate that about 75% of the requests for support really need our help solving the right problem.

The best value we consultants often add to client projects is not in answering a question presented to us but in helping clients to ask even better questions (and then answering those questions!).

These are the $100k+ questions.

This usually comes from prodding and probing how the question came to be and looking for areas of logical fallacies.

Questions To Create Better Questions

We’ve all heard of the ‘five whys’, and that approach has some value. But you also risk sounding like an annoying child. So, I suggest focusing on a slightly different mindset.

When a client approaches you to resolve a problem, I suggest running the question through your three-part filter.

1. Does the client have the right goal? Is the client thinking too narrowly about the problem? Are they missing out on opportunities - especially those posed by changing trends and new technologies? Could they be more ambitious with the question?

2. Is the client tackling the right problem? Has the client identified the correct problem preventing them from achieving their goal(s)? Do they understand the root causes of the problem, or are they just tackling the symptoms? Have they done the exploratory work of investigating the real causes of the problem?

3. Is the client taking the right approach to solving the problem? Is it the best approach to achieving their long-term goals? Does it connect all the pieces of the puzzle together? Does it align with the needs and desires of relevant stakeholders? Have other options been considered?

We’ll take a deeper dive into each of these.

Question 1: Does The Client Have The Right Goals?

Is the client missing an opportunity with their current mindset?

• Educate the client on the industry's current trends and audience needs. It helps to have your own benchmarks and show where the client exists today in those benchmarks. Ensure you’ve done your research calls to understand best practices and changing behaviours. You can even commission research about the client if you like to share it with them.

• Does the goal give them a competitive advantage? Based on your knowledge of their sector and what similar organisations are doing, does this goal give them a clear competitive advantage? Will it bring them level or pull ahead if they achieve this outcome?

• Could they be more ambitious? Are there new opportunities emerging (remember your high school PEST analysis) that the client should seize on now to future-proof themselves later? What’s changing in the social and technological environment, they could embrace here?

You should be able to use your expertise in the industry and knowledge of what others are doing to ensure the client is setting the right goals for themselves.

If you have your own benchmarks, it helps to show the client how they would appear in those benchmarks if they achieve the goal compared to organisations currently on the list. This often spurs the client to set more ambitious goals.

Question 2: Is The Client Solving The Right Problem?

Once we’re clear about the goal(s), it’s key to ensure the client is solving the right ‘problem’ that is currently preventing them from achieving their goals. Organisations have a tendency to tackle the surface-level issue instead of going deeper and uncovering the real problem.

This is where essentially the process of:

1. Validating the problem. Scope out the full impact and symptoms of the problem and check the data to support the assumptions about its size and severity. Many problems are built on assumptions or beliefs that sound right but aren’t supported by the data. By refining the problem, you can offer immediate value in these situations. It helps to be an expert on the problem.

2. Develop and evaluate your hypotheses. Develop your beliefs about the causes of the problem. Adopt the MECE approach if you can. Develop a set of mutually exclusive yet comprehensively exhaustive possible causes of the problem.

   

3. Begin validating or refuting each of these hypotheses. Set up data questions for each of these and analyse whether the hypothesis is true and the extent of it. Often, you find it’s not a single cause, but a combination of causes. Once you know the answer, you can dig deep to explore why. Set up exclusive options and explore them until you’ve really zeroed in on the problem.

4. Keep diving deeper until you begin expanding the problem rather than narrowing it. In the example below, we’ve learned that engagement in a brand community is declining because interest in the topic has dropped. We could begin undertaking surveys and interviews to uncover why that’s happened, but now we’re expanding the problem rather than narrowing it.

The point is that most organisations we work with want us to provide a solution without fully diagnosing the real problem. This often means the solution wouldn’t work.

For example, an organisation might want to change community platforms to solve the problem above without realising that it won’t make a difference if interest in the topic has declined.

This is where $100k+ questions emerge for you to solve.

In the above example, the question isn’t “How do we increase the number of posts in the community?”

Rather, it’s:

“how do we redefine the community’s purpose to align with the changing interests of our audience?

That’s a six-figure question, and you can easily imagine a scope of work involving audience research, strategy, stakeholder engagement, etc…

Question 3: Is The Client Taking The Right Approach To Solve The Problem?

Is this really the best approach the client can take?

The next consideration is whether the question you’re being asked or the problem to solve is logical and coherent.

• Coherent = Does it align with stakeholder needs, goals, and other priorities?

• Logical = Is the best approach (quickest, cheapest, most successful) to achieve the desired outcome?

To answer these questions, it usually helps to do the following.

• Engage stakeholders to check needs and priorities align. I used to be shocked (shocked I tell you!) to discover stakeholders often have very different understandings, priorities, and support towards a project. It’s critical to have great stakeholder engagement here. You will often find your contact needs to either educate their colleagues, win over hostile stakeholders, or adapt their project to be coherent with activities elsewhere.

• Compare competing options to achieve the same goal. It’s a good idea to review alternative options to achieve the same goal and see if the question or approach the organisation is pursuing is the most effective. Often, the decision is based on constraints, which may be more flexible than many consider. How does the intended approach stack up if you compare it with other approaches?

When you’re done, you can assess whether the client is pursuing a coherent and logical approach to the problem.

Only at this level do you really get into the art of solution design.

I’d guess that for around 50% of the projects we’re involved in, the answer to at least one of the above is no. This allows you to propose a better approach and ask a $100k+ question.

But What If The Client Doesn’t Want Any Of This?

You can cause a lot of frustration if you don’t pursue this well.

The counterbalance is that sometimes the client has thoroughly thought through the problem and just wants your smarts to answer the question.

It can be frustrating if you hire a consultant to solve one problem and they start trying to solve another one-especially one above your level of responsibility.

I remember working at the United Nations when a consultant was brought in to improve fundraising efficiency and began explaining why we needed to create an entirely new digital department. It was a completely impractical solution - far above the level of anyone in the room to implement.

There are some key ways to avoid this.

1. Embrace the principle of constant clarification. The client shouldn’t be surprised by anything you present. You should constantly update them on what you’re doing, what you’re finding, and where that journey is taking you. Very early on you can explain to them what you’re doing and check that they’re ok with it.

2. Bring stakeholders with you on the journey. If you’re heading in a direction which would impact other stakeholders, it’s critical to bring those stakeholders with you on the journey. If you cannot keep them updated and engaged in the project, you will struggle to solve the real problems.

3. Win over stakeholders outside of your immediate contact’s control. No one wants a consultant they didn’t hire to start telling them what to do. You must know how to win them over in discussions and build positive relationships.

Ultimately, if you get the vibe that the client doesn’t want to solve the bigger problem, don’t try to do it. But you might be surprised how often the problem you’re presented with isn’t the problem you should solve.

Summary

1. Don’t settle for the problem a client gives you. Often it isn’t the right problem they need to solve. You need to ask three questions instead.

2. Check if they have the right goal(s). Is it ambitious enough? Would it give them a competitive advantage? Is it aligned with social and technology trends?

3. Check if they’re tackling the right problem. Have they fully validated the problem and gotten to the root cause of it?

4. Check if they’re pursuing the best solution. Is the solution coherent and logical? Is it the best solution of the possible options they have? Is it aligned with what the rest of the organisation is doing?

5. Don’t expand the scope if the client isn’t ready. Bring stakeholders on the journey and don’t go far beyond your client’s comfort zone.

Good luck!