2 BUSINESS HOW-TO
Golden Rules for Customer Service in Any Business
Have you ever had bad service before? Of course — we all have. All businesses let customers and prospects down from time to time. It sucks when that happens, but the reality is that businesses are run by humans, and humans make mistakes. No customer expects you to be perfect. What matters most is how you handle the situation. Many people mistakenly think this means you need to bend over backward for the customer in order to resolve the issue. While no customer wants to hear that policy or some other nonsense is the reason you can’t do something for them, this is the answer customers hear far too often. They get even more pissed when it comes from the owner, since they know the owner is the one who makes the policies. So what’s the best way to handle customer issues and complaints? We run our customer service according to two golden rules. Let’s start with the first part of this golden rule: When you screw up, don’t hope the customer doesn’t notice — own it. Apologize and offer to fix your mistake. Communication, even when it’s delivering a negative message, is better than silence or a cover-up. Personally, I’m always less angry if a company brings an issue to my attention as opposed to me bringing it to their attention. The second half of this rule is to always be polite. Customers are not always right; I know that is hard to believe, but it’s true. I always want to hear out the customer’s concern and let them know I understand the issue by paraphrasing what they said. If it is something that really isn’t our fault and there isn’t much gray area, I lead 1 ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH WHILE STILL BEING POLITE.
them via questions and statements so they can discover that the problem may not be with us. Regardless, I’m always polite. After all, right or wrong, they are the customer.
thought was a fair compensation — of course, after I politely told the truth about the situation not being 100 percent our fault. When a customer is reasonable about what they want for compensation, we do it. When they aren’t, we have a chat with them to find a reasonable settlement. At the end of the day, your job is to provide something of value in exchange for someone’s hard-earned money. In this day and age, where people overreact by leaving negative reviews and drafting social media posts over the simplest of misunderstandings, having a few golden rules to drive your customer service efforts can mean one less negative review and one less lost customer, which all spells more sales and revenue for you in the long run.
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ALWAYS ERR ON THE SIDE OF THE CUSTOMER. AN ERROR IS RARELY ONE-SIDED.
I remember a customer we had a few years ago who called us because his promotion landed three or four days before the expiration date of the offer. Now, on the surface, that could’ve been 100 percent our fault, but the reality was that the customer was 10 days late getting his promotional content to us. I firmly believe we messed up by not catching the expiration date and noticing the short window of time left for his promo. But since he was 10 days late, he gave us the expiration date and signed off on the final proof, so there was plenty of fault to go around. But when something like this happens, the business has to take some ownership. In a case like this, I’d likely ask what the customer
–Shaun
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