With these three elements of customer service, you can
take a customer's bad experience and turn it into a positive one.
Contributed By:
Christine James (CRM Expert)
Source: Business.com
Your heart drops as you
take in the furious Facebook rant with your business tagged all over it. The
dreaded customer complaint. The terrible review. No stars. Thumbs down. Worst
ever.
If only you could exit out
of the page and it would all disappear. But the worldwide web forgets nothing.
Even if you fire said rude employee, the review stays. It's too late.
Or is it?
Or is it?
Along
with eyes (glaring or not) on you comes an opportunity, because obscurity,
rather than infamy, is a small business's worst demise. Any publicity – any amount of the
public's attention toward your company – can be rerouted to your benefit
with the proper care.
It isn't how you acted, or
how your right-out-of-college rep portrayed your company, that displays the
true integrity of your brand. It's how you react – your response to the
negative situation.
Adding these three elements
to your response can not only prove to the public eye that your heart is
genuine and the mistake unintentional, it might even win back your disgruntled
customer with a newfound appreciation for your excellent customer service.
1. Speedy customer service
Procrastination.
We all lean toward putting off unpleasant tasks as long as we can. But in the
area of customer service, don't.
Acting as quickly as
possible proves that you value your customer's time. It shows that you care. It
also gives them less time to simmer, talk negatively about your company and
write more bad reviews. A speedy response gives a bad experience less time to
accelerate into catastrophe. Many things can go wrong with a product or a
service, and your customers can take a lot. But wasting their time, putting
them on the back burner, is a surefire way to stoke their wrath.
So, set an alarm. Give
yourself a pep talk and determine to dive into the fray. The sooner you deal
with the issue, the better.
2. Sincere customer
service
You've been there before,
on the butt end of bad service. We all have. So you can relate, at least to
some degree, to every red-faced profaner, even if their assault is unjustly
aimed at you. Let your common ground, your mutual humanity, set the tone of
your response: "I understand."
And you do. You are a
customer as well. Treating others the way you want to be treated applies to
every situation. Laying your own annoyances aside, you can reach out and
connect on a personal level.
There are fake smiles and
practiced lines at every corner, from salespeople who have mastered the art of
marketing, professional public speakers, performers, etc. "I'm so
sorry." The smiling red lips of the attendant look anything but
apologetic. "Here, have a cookie."
Looking
at a series of customer complaints, one can see a thread of commonality.
Companies like NET10 Wireless consistently draw complaints of rudeness and
unprofessionalism, one customer claiming that NET10 went so far as to hang up
on them. This behavior from companies generates understandable amounts of
animosity and feelings of injustice, which leads their ex-customers to plot out
extreme vendettas.
A cheery facade can be the most impenetrable wall. But think about a time you found a real person, with a heart, on the other side of the counter. Regardless of the outcome, did you leave feeling like a victim when you saw that the person trying to help you cared? Sincere service can cover a multitude of problems.
A cheery facade can be the most impenetrable wall. But think about a time you found a real person, with a heart, on the other side of the counter. Regardless of the outcome, did you leave feeling like a victim when you saw that the person trying to help you cared? Sincere service can cover a multitude of problems.
3. Exceptional customer
service
How do you go above and
beyond for someone who might, in that moment, feel like your enemy?
Don't take their words
personally. You can defend the integrity of your business by letting your
actions (your reactions) speak louder than your words. Yes, they might have had
a bad experience, but you can make the process of reaching a resolution so easy
and heartfelt that all animosity dissolves. Your reaction could speak of
service so impactfully that the initial experience is not only forgiven, but
forgotten.
Apply creativity to your customer
service. Have a brainstorming session, a game plan, to deal with unhappy
customers, because bad reviews happen. No matter how hard you work at being
exceptional, mistakes happen, accidents happen, lousy days happen. Prepare for
them. Ask yourself and your team how you can stand above your competition in
exceptional customer service.
So, before you close the
comment box in defeat, open your eyes, square your shoulders, and rise to the
challenge. Speed, sincerity and sweetness can reroute the attention to your
benefit. Seize the opportunity to shine.
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