One of the most unpleasant parts of running any businesses is dealing with customers who are mad at you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a dog walker or a graphic designer or a neurosurgeon. One of these days, someone’s going to express some significant dissatisfaction with what you do or how you do it.
When you’re still a small business, it feels like they’re attacking you. (Or, worse, attacking your baby. Those heartless rats!)
But bigger businesses foul this up too. We all take it too personally—it’s human nature.
The fact is, customers who care enough to get mad at you can provide a wonderful blessing. A cranky, ranting customer represents one of several possibilities.
The customer is nuts
This is the one that doesn’t help you at all. If the customer is truly delusional (some people are, you know), you’ll just have to set a boundary and walk away.
If you can afford it, give them all of their money back. And make it very clear that you won’t be doing more business with them.
Be very polite, set a very clear and firm boundary, and disengage.
The customer is right
Here’s the one that hurts. Your service/product/attitude/delivery were unacceptable.
When you were getting started with your business, you were going to do everything exactly right. You were going to have the best service in the world, wonderfully fair prices, amazing quality, the most remarkable product.
Then reality started to sink in. (This business thing really does have a lot in common with parenting.)
Perfection only exists in dreams. When you get off your tail and actually do stuff, you mess some of it up. And you know, there are a lot of good reasons so much service is terrible, and so many products aren’t what you hoped they would be.
The first thing to do is to, in Ben Zander’s wonderful suggestion, throw your hands in the air, smile, and say, “How fascinating!”
(Do not do this in front of the customer. She will kick you in the pants.)
Screw-ups mean you were trying something that wasn’t dead easy for you. Congratulations! You get 1,000 gold stars for getting out of your comfort zone. Almost no one is willing to do that, and you did. Please allow me to give you a hug.
Picking up the pieces
Now, back to addressing that pesky problem. A good screw-up generally means there’s something in your systems that needs a tweak.
If you can manage it, try not to freak out and overcorrect. The first thing to ask yourself is, Realistically is this going to happen again? If the answer is really no, do what you need to do to cool the customer off, and try not to dwell on it.
But usually there’s an opportunity for improvement. A better process you can put into place. A better system for managing client questions, or for packaging orders, or for setting expectations so people aren’t disappointed when they get their stuff.
Since I recently had a customer service experience that left me unreasonable, angry, frustrated, and generally feeling rotten, I thought I’d unpack that for you here. There are some really good lessons about the kinds of things that make people angry, and solutions for fixing them.
I won’t name the vendor. There’s no point, and they’re not really the Satanic minions I felt they were when I was having my problem.
And this isn’t about them. It’s about you. And me. And getting better.
Since this easily could be one of my ten-screen marathons, I’m going to break it up for you. The first installment of my letter to the vendor is tomorrow. (Ooh, cliffhanger!)
In tech-support land, I’ve heard this called ‘Fix it twice’.
When somebody rings up with a problem, fix it. Then figure out how to avoid the problem for future users. Is your documentation unclear? Would there a be a better way to run the sales process? Or does your system interface need a tweak?
There’s usually something you can do to stop it happening again.
kazaris last blog post..Wishing for change, or a change of wishes…
Exactly. I like “fix it twice.” Lots of people don’t realize that some of the most important work support can do is to prevent the problem from happening again.
Something like this happened to me recently for the first time ever – in a very successful 30-year career. I wrote a case study for a client and *their* client hated it – for reasons they didn’t ask and I’ll never find out. I’m trying now to make it clear they need to pay me a kill fee, as magazines do. I think the lesson here is to do a written contract at the outset, which I don’t do often enough. Unpleasant experience, to say the least.
By the way, glad to have you back!
Jean Gogolins last blog post..From Now On, We’re All About Stories
Good to see you back, Sonia!
This isn’t a blogging or social media issue: it’s a customer service issue from here on out.
Focusing on the client, and clearly expending energy to be thoughtful regarding them, is the new standard. With the speed of web-based buzz and how wide it can spread, nothing less will do.
Thank you, though, for pointing out that it’s neither possible nor always desirable to be an eager-to-please slave to all hotheads. Lots of heat comes with that ability to rant speedily.
Looking forward to more!
Peter Becks last blog post..EMR 101, Part 3: Abstract & Delegate
Hi Sonia,
You will tell us better but I think there are two main issues here. The first one is how to deal with the customer so we can satisfy his/her demand and another is how to extract useful information on what’s wrong with our excellent business. (And maybe it has nothing to do with the product, but how it was sold).
I spent the first dozen years of my adult life working in a flower shop with my father and sister. Our flower shop was the finest in the city without a distant second… well, at least when it came to our product. Our customer service, not so much. My father was not one to believe that the customer was always right. In fact, he was more likely to assume the customer was full of it and had no problem telling that to leave his store and never come back. Though I did admire his willingness to stand strong and not be pushed around, I found him all too often unyielding in his stance. There is a balance to be struck. It is important to stand your ground and not allow someone to repeatedly run you down, but sometimes a solution is as simple as gaining perspective. Quality product and customer service must roll from the assembly line in even measure.
Writer Dads last blog post..Stop, Think, Take Action.
@Jean, ugh. Yes, a written contract is the way to go. Do I use one? No. Not smart of me.
@Peter, exactly–old issue, but web 2.0 makes glitches (and superheroism) so much more visible.
@Miguel, exactly so. I would say just as often the problem isn’t in what was delivered, it’s how it was promised, or how the surrounding communication was handled. I’ll go into that quite a bit more in the next posts.
@Writer Dad, your dad was the floral version of the Soup Nazi! I find that a sort of admirable stance but not one I would consider adopting. 🙂
Sonia,
Haha can’t wait for the next installment.
I really like your emphasis on improvement, though. A lot of people say that they look at setbacks as future improvements, problems as opportunities, etc., but it’s much harder to actually do it. You have to take a long-term view of things, and realize that a small mistake, with time, can turn into a big problem or even be the start of a pattern. Yes, our feelings can get hurt, but putting in the work to fix things early stops much more future hurt and frustration, and is worth every bit of effort.
David Dittells last blog post..Clearing Your Workspace Clutter So You Can Focus On Your Writing
He’s been called the flower nazi before. No joke. : > )
Writer Dads last blog post..Questions are the New Answers
I take the criticism so personally. It’s ok when the customer IS right…I just try to fix the problem. But in retail customers sometimes have unrealistic expectations and they can be very dishonest in what they are trying to achieve ie a discount or something for free. It’s amazing the lengths they will go to to achieve this. For example, buying something on Friday, wearing or using it over the weekend and then trying to return it as “faulty” on Monday. It’s the dishonesty of people that kills me in this game 🙁