Don't say no. First, ask why.

The question arrived via email: ”How can we access printed training materials?”

And it confused me. Printed training materials? These are on-demand webinars.

Sure, we have PDFs of the slides. But they’re not that helpful without the videos of the workshops. The hour-long videos. So I asked:

Is there anything we can do to help make it easier for you and your team to view the video sessions?

And what I got back surprised me.

In the spirit of being “intentional about serving the needs and requests of our stakeholders,” this customer had one person whose “identified impairment” required them to access our resources via print.

I’m embarrassed to admit that this had never occurred to me. Of course, videos are inaccessible to some people, for a variety of reasons.

And it’s not that we can’t create transcripts. Temi makes it easy. Even if there’s still some time required for language clean-up and visual brand refinement.

The point is, I didn’t think about this until a customer asked for it.

But instead of saying, no, that’s not how we do things (which is so easy to do, especially if you’re busy or stressed or short-staffed or any number of things)…instead of taking that knee-jerk approach, I got curious. I asked why. I recognized the person on the other end of the email thread.

How many times a day / week / month / year do you get the chance to be curious about how your customers are really experiencing your content or your product?

When it happens, do you notice? Or are you too busy getting done the things already on your to-do list, which, in essence, are the things you’ve decided they need from you?

Next time a customer or employee or colleague makes an unexpected request, don’t say no. Ask why. You might be surprised what you learn about them. Or about yourself.