The customer is frequently wrong. There’s no question about that. But we, like all businesses, strive for happy customers so we try our best to make them happy.
But sometimes it’s hard.
I’m A Plain Speaking Guy
I’m a plain speaking guy. I think I’m pretty relaxed about things and a little laid back.
But sometimes…..sometimes I don’t see eye to eye with a customer. And as much as I’d like to say “Don’t be such an ass!”, I can’t.
Exhibit 1
From the web site I mentioned below we had a customer buy at 7.31 am on Thursday. She wrote in the spoecial instructions that she urgently required the product and asked us to dispatch it as soon as possible.
At 9.40 am the order was processed, packed and posted.
At 8.30 that night the customer sent another email cancelling the order. During the night she sent 3 more emails. Each more aggressive than the last.
Here’s part of the last email:
“This will be my 4th attempt to contact you people!
Could someone PLEASE respond to this transaction #xxxxx xxxxx this will be a 4th attempt to cancel this order! I would like some type of response to my efforts.
If I do not hear from anyone shortly I will contact my credit card company.”
We then emailed the customer to explain the time differences and the reason she hadn’t received a response immediately. That didn’t do much good.
“I find it hard to believe this order was sent out less than 24 hours upon receipt. I’m not happy about this!”
That’s The First Complaint About Too Quick Service!
That’s our first complaint about too quick service!
With an Internet business your reputation is everything. Sure, I could ‘blow up’ and argue with the customer but that will do neither of us any good. And it will only end up with a very unhappy customer, me with high blood pressure and, maybe, the business being bad-mouthed all over the web.
And when potential customers of our online store do a search for us the story of this unhappy customer might be public. And that damages our reputation and damages our business.
Always Learn Something
I guess you always learn something from incidences like this.
# 1: You can’t keep everyone happy all the time
# 2: Perhaps we should install a 24 customer service operation
Anyway, it’s all part of this game of business.
How do you handle customer complaints?
Cheers
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