Meeting, prepare for it , Why?

This post is out of recent experience I had in a meeting with my collages.

We were to go for a meeting with the customer on the subject of the recent issue reported in the service that my company is responsible for. So I asked shall we sit down and discuss how and what were are planing to present to the customer.

"you got all facts right "
"Yes ! I have all information required for this discussion"
" so , that's OK , just present it as we have nothing to hide."
" do you not think that you should know what I am planning to present"
" don't worry "

then we met the customer, I started presenting to the customer the facts and numbers , logs etc. Customer was impressed with what we have done to address the issue and managed escalations. There by proving that we have done all we can in the set boundaries.

All going well , and just before we were to shake hands , my collage mentioned to me that we should change person X from the team as he is not competent enough to be part of this team. With this comment, customer picked the point as I mentioned that the same person was attending the calls when the issue occurred.

From this point onward we were at receiving end then it took lot of convincing efforts to give confidence to the customer that there is nothing wrong with that particular employee but we are looking for better experienced person to replace him . This comment by my colleague was merely a suggestions to improve the team skills.

After this meeting , the customer requested for a change in the team which was unwarranted and consequential effect on the person was unrecoverable.

So, I questioned my colleague "what made you make such suggestion in front of the customer" .

"I thought we should have demonstrated that we are taking some corrective actions out this "

"but it was not required , as customer had accepted in positive sense what we have presented."
..
..

We took a hit for not being in the sync and the cost was too high for my company.

Preparing for a meeting or a teleconference should be considered as a necessary activity to avoid embarrassing situations which might jeopardise your credibility and the organisation's reputation.