The Secret Formula to Telling Building Data Stories
The challenge: Rarely are current reports answering simple client questions.
Insights by Tim Cramer | Business Development Manager | Key2Act
Be Prepared to Answer This Simple Question - What have you done for me lately?
It’s a common question asked of any service provider by their clients. The question can take many similar forms, such as:
· How do you provide value?
· How do I know this is fixed?
· Or the often implied but rarely said, Why should I trust you?
These questions can be difficult to answer. Even when the proper troubleshooting steps are taken and the right fix applied, incidental issues like a separate piece of equipment suddenly having a new problem right after a technician visit, or a new problem manifesting on the same piece of equipment, or the dreaded call-back for the same exact issue, can all lead to customer doubt and distrust.
When the Report Misses the Mark
You spend hours creating a report for a client and it, unfortunately, does not satisfy them. In the age of data, we are now empowered to harness mountains of information to represent events and lead to better diagnoses factually. However, this monstrous amount of data can become overwhelming to our clients and us. We have all felt the struggle of trying to use data to explain a problem to a customer. We have all seen that too much data becomes just as unhelpful as not enough. We have all been in a room with a client as their eyes glaze over at the lecture they receive, or the 5-page report laid before them defining all the information we want them to have. The result you are not expecting is that the customer has checked out, and you’ve lost the opportunity to delight your customer.
How Can You Tell a More Compelling Data Story?
Effective customer communication then becomes not a question of how do I give them the facts? But rather, how can I tell them a compelling story?
I use the word “story”, not to give the impression of some fictional tale, but rather because stories have the power to convey a complex concept in a simple way. As human beings, we are hardwired to relate to and comprehend the messages of stories better than mere facts and data. This is evident every time we read a book or watch a movie. Just as the story of the boy who cried wolf teaches us that it is important to tell the truth, a well-told story can convey any number of complex and hard to understand concepts. So how then do we tell stories that compel our clients as effectively as the parables we all know, but with factual content that helps us help our clients?
Before defining the stories, we want to tell and how we tell them, we must first define what we hope to get out of these stories. With our target audience being our clients, we know the most often asked question is, what have you done for me lately? So, we must set out to answer precisely that question.
The 3 Messages We Want to Deliver with Data
We need stories that convey our company’s value. This means the story really needs to always end with how we already have or intend to provide value. This typically takes the form of solving a problem. Every story then needs to end with one of 3 possible conclusions:
1. We have prevented a problem, maintaining value.
2. We have found a problem that we can solve, and here is the value we can provide.
3. We have solved a problem, and here is the value we have added.
The Why, Why and How of the 3 Data Stories
By defining the above three clear outcomes in the stories we tell our customers, we can better define the stories themselves and what content they must include. Those stories and how they can be told are defined as follows:
Assurance Story – Peace of Mind
What - In an assurance story, we need to utilize data to verify the effective management and continued performance of a site, system, or equipment to meet its designed operation.
Why – This story demonstrates its highest value in the cases of critical environments, where the fact that everything is okay is not just preferable; it is essential to the operation of the business. Think lab spaces, life safety, food safety, or data centers.
How – The assurance story needs to be able to show that a site, system, and/or equipment are meeting some required specifications. We need to have a clearly defined set of criteria and show the criteria are met throughout a specific period. This should be clearly shown visually through trends and charts that concisely show the compliance we want to convey.
Diagnosis Story – Problem Identification
What – In a diagnosis story, we need to show the client that a problem has been detected in a particular system or equipment and that action is required, which we are qualified to perform.
Why – By demonstrating the proof of a problem and what must be done, we can more easily gain the appropriate approvals to perform the fix.
How – The diagnosis story needs to again start with clearly defined criteria for how the system or equipment should run. We need to be able to track in a visual way when those criteria have gone into fault and indicated a specific problem. Ideally, we want to show all the secondary effects of that problem, and how that can lead to negative outcomes for the client. It is important, however, that the information shown never becomes too large to lose sight of the root problem and what next steps must be taken.
Confirmation Story – Resolution Validation
What – A confirmation story shows that the work performed previously has resolved a problem and led to an improved outcome.
Why – This is arguably the most valuable of all the reports. It allows us to show the client visually that a measurable improvement has been made in performance. This becomes especially critical when initial steps taken are proactive, or at the very least before the client was aware of a problem. It’s easy for a client to appreciate the solution to a problem that directly affected them, less so when they did not feel the effects of the problem before being resolved. This leads to the service paradox that effective proactive service can be underappreciated. We want to show our clients that value, so it can be fully understood.
How – The confirmation story works as the inverse of the Diagnosis story. It demonstrates that through our pre-defined criteria on a site, system, and/or equipment, a previous problem has now recovered, and things have improved in a measurable way. This story is most impactful when you can correlate the improvement with the time of work performed to resolve.
The Reporting Goal
The effective means to tell these compelling stories should be the primary goal in all customer communication. By conveying these often-tricky concepts in this story-based manor, all validated by real, easily visualized data, we move toward the status of “Trusted Advisor”.
At this point we have achieved our goal: Our clients have full confidence in our recommendations and services performed. What have you done for me lately? becomes a question of the past, and one that is easily answered in the rare event it does resurface.
Now it’s your turn to ask, how can you be telling better stories to delight your clients?
About the Author:
Tim Cramer| Business Development Manager | Key2Act
10+ years in HVAC/BAS as a Property Manager (22 buildings), and BAS Service Operations Manager (over 1,500 buildings – commercial, retail, residential)
Currently leading a beta process for a new smart building ecosystem SaaS offering and building technology partnerships to enhance the customer experience as a Business Development Manager