Think about how we often describe our customers. We might label them as difficult, angry, rude, uninformed, arrogant, etc. (Sometimes we use terms like friendly, warm, engaging and so on.) On one level this seems useful. It might help us decide how to handle certain customers in specific situations. But labels can also cause problems. Labels can get in the way of better customer service. When we label people we tend to focus on the label. We see the customer through that filter. Everything they do or say gets colored by the label we attach to them. Yet to give [...]
customer service complaint
I admit I’m rather a demanding consumer. I’m pretty sure I get it from my mom. She’s one of the world’s all time greatest when it comes to being a demanding customer. And I think it’s good there are people like us around. No one else can offer businesses the quality of advice that their demanding customers can. They should thank us. But most companies either ignore or barely tolerate demanding customers. They fail to train their employees how to deal with us. Often their goal seems to be just to pacify us and get us to shut up rather [...]
Recently I submitted a help ticket to a company about a problem with their product. It was not a critical issue but one that needed fixing. After reviewing the issue they marked it as “resolved”. But they never told me it was resolved. And they didn’t tell me how to apply the fix. So, from where I stood, the problem was not resolved. Not even close. The problem was, they focused solely on fixing the problem. They forgot about communicating with their customer. Sure, they fixed the problem. But they never told anyone it was fixed or how to apply [...]
In the business of customer service training and improvement, we talk about being honest and open with our customers. This is important. It builds trust and improves communications with our customers.
But sometimes people take honesty too far. Sometimes it does more harm than good. Recently, Paul Simon (one of my readers) shared some glaring examples of this…
Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Encourage feedback from your customers And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… Direct, honest feedback from our customers is among the most valuable information a business can have. Yet most employees treat feedback like the H1N1 virus. They hope they don’t get it and they’d really like to have a vaccination against it. Not all feedback is negative. But it’s all
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…
“Every employee who deals with clients must have the authority to handle complaints.” -Carl Sewell Author of: Customers For Life: How To Turn That One-Time Buyer Into a Lifetime Customer
Most companies (not all, sadly) have policies and procedures to handle customer feedback. But very few do a good job keeping track of feedback from customers and then doing something useful with it.
Like any information, customer feedback has no
