Yesterday, Seth Godin shared an interesting post with us, Win the fight, lose the customer. Seth reminds us we can't prove we're right and acknowledge the customer is upset at the same time.
Seth has a point. When it comes to customer service, you shouldn't be trying to show an unhappy customer why they're wrong. It's only going to cause more frustration and unhappiness. Take this real-life customer service example:
So instead of trying to prove a customer wrong, a better approach is to try to understand what happened to cause the customer to be unhappy in the first place. Listen and understand the problem instead of listening for buzz words and jumping to conclusions - or trying to show them why they're wrong. Think to yourself, was there a miscommunication between the organization and customer? Was the customer met with a problem the product couldn't solve? Don't just scrape the surface. Often times what customers are complaining about is a symptom of a bigger problem.
Then, of course, it's always a good practice to put a survey program in place to see how your customer service team is doing. Conducting customer service surveys periodically to collect customer feedback will help you continue to make customers a focus and improve training methods.
Seth has a point. When it comes to customer service, you shouldn't be trying to show an unhappy customer why they're wrong. It's only going to cause more frustration and unhappiness. Take this real-life customer service example:
A few months ago, I received flowers for an anniversary that died before the 7 day guarantee was up. So I called the company (Flowers Online) to to get the order resent. Should be simple enough, only, the order didn't exist in the computer. Turns out, the flowers were never ordered from Flowers Online. The flowers were hand delivered by a local florist; and unfortunately for me, when they did the arrangement they attached the wrong flower company's brochure. By the time this all got sorted out, it was past the 7 days and the company the flowers were ordered from (Internet Florist) was refusing to make good on their guarantee. After several days, calls and hours spent on the phone, I was beyond angry to the point where Internet Florist had lost a customer, and I was spreading the story like wildfire to friends and family.
However, after my final attempt, the customer service manager called me back to apologize for the entire incident. She explained that rules are supposed to be guidelines and are not hard and fast. She apologized for the entire thing. Even though I had been so frustrated and "technically" the reps were right, the fact that the manager of their customer services team was being empathetic and took the time to actually listen and understand the problem made me feel a lot better.
However, after my final attempt, the customer service manager called me back to apologize for the entire incident. She explained that rules are supposed to be guidelines and are not hard and fast. She apologized for the entire thing. Even though I had been so frustrated and "technically" the reps were right, the fact that the manager of their customer services team was being empathetic and took the time to actually listen and understand the problem made me feel a lot better.
So instead of trying to prove a customer wrong, a better approach is to try to understand what happened to cause the customer to be unhappy in the first place. Listen and understand the problem instead of listening for buzz words and jumping to conclusions - or trying to show them why they're wrong. Think to yourself, was there a miscommunication between the organization and customer? Was the customer met with a problem the product couldn't solve? Don't just scrape the surface. Often times what customers are complaining about is a symptom of a bigger problem.
Then, of course, it's always a good practice to put a survey program in place to see how your customer service team is doing. Conducting customer service surveys periodically to collect customer feedback will help you continue to make customers a focus and improve training methods.
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