Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

My company is an industrial services provider in the oil and gas and energy sector.  Providing solutions that  resonate with the customer needs is in the core of our business and to do so we always visit our customers  when we get a business inquiry from them to hear about their specific needs, the problem they are facing  and based on this feedback, we can decide which of our services is most suitable to satisfy his needs.  All  throughout our project cycle, we work closely with the customer so we get live feedback on our performance  while providing stories of our successes with previous customers to ensure the customer of our ability to fulfil  his business needs and to build positive relations with him which connects to future opportunities.

Application

We had a business inquiry from a client who owns a petrochemical plant and had a scheduled shut down for  a critical part of the plant for maintenance activities. After visiting the part of the plant that was to be shut  down to better understand the scope, we sat down with the client for a meeting to get more details about  the difficulties they are facing to see how best we can support them.

The client was a little hesitant about hiring us so we shared a recent success story in a sister company of  theirs.  We explained the scope our job and how we maintained constant contact with that client which made  us execute the job to the client’s satisfaction.  We also shared data about our equipment and invited them to  visit our company to inspect our readiness.

Insight & Approach

The client really appreciated our dedication to his cause and how relatable the story was to him.  Our  transparency also helped tip the scales in our favor.  Throughout the project we made sure we were  communicating with the client on a daily basis to tackle setbacks and challenges and their feedback at the  end of the project was very positive.

This course made me put storytelling into perspective. It made me think back on those times our  communication with the customer was rushed and not thorough and as a result our job performance was  poor because we were not clear on the customer’s needs.

