Every now and then you’ll have a customer who disagrees with one of your policies. No matter what the policy is, don’t justify or defend it from your company’s point of view.
For example, maybe your service department has a fee for inspecting the products you sell. And unless it’s covered by warranty, the customer has to pay the inspection fee. If the customer balks at the fee, don’t justify the fee by saying: “Our technician needs to get paid for his time.”
Customers don’t care how you pay your technician. The customer is seeing things from their perspective. They are not there to learn your perspective.
It’s better to explain why you have the fee. Talk about how it helps the customer.
The more you can align the reason for the fee with something that helps your customer, the more likely it is they will accept it without further complaining.
As a customer, pay attention to how people explain policies to you. Do they justify or defend them based on their needs? Or do they explain them in the context of how they help you?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Kevin,
I really connect with what you say! I am setting up a Customer Experience firm to help organisations create and sustain quality customer experience therefore help change life from this end of the world. Have worked 15 years and this si what I got to do now.
Service quality is a foregin language (well, there is quite some lip service around) and practice is scarcely rare.
Your content is very helpful. Will keep visiting here.
Hopefully we’ll meet at the centre with improving service as we work from different ends!
Hi Don – thanks for writing. Glad you’re getting some value from our content here. Please stay in touch!
KS