Posts Tagged ‘bad service’

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Warranty or the Customer? Who wins? It had better be the Customer

January 12, 2011

My friend Bart just spent some time in warrantee hell. His Dell laptop battery died after 12-and-a-half months on a 12-month warranty. As you can imagine, Dell refused to replace the battery because the warrantee was only 12 months. And rules are rules.

Bart is a sales rep for a medical practice software company. He uses a particular IT vendor for his own computer equipment and refers his clients to the same vendor for theirs.  Bart estimates that in the past year, he referred about $500,000 worth of Dell business to this vendor.

When Bart didn’t get anywhere with trying to get Dell to replace the battery (a battery which replaced another one which died after 16 months), he went to Chris, the IT vendor. He figured perhaps they would be more willing to push the rules for him, since he does quite a bit of business with them each year. No such luck. So Bart decided that Dell didn’t deserve his loyalty anymore. He called Chris again and had the following conversation:

Bart:      Chris, do you still sell, support and install HP servers and equipment?

Chris:     Yep.

Bart:       I would like you to quote HP equipment instead of Dell on all future deals I bring.

Chris:     Really? Over a battery?

Bart:      Yes. It’s not the battery; it’s the principle. I vote with my wallet. Please understand I am not mad at you. Feel free to share my emails with your Dell rep as well so he understands.

Chris:     I will share it with him now.

 

15 minutes pass and Bart gets an email from Chris.

 

Chris:     Your new battery will ship to us and you should have it by Friday or early next week. Oh, he asked me to ask you to please bring my next deal to Dell.

 

Amazing how that works.

Should Bart have expected that Dell would honor the warranty even though it had expired? My feeling is “yes,” and not just because he referenced over $500,000 worth of business to them each year. It should be “yes” even if he bought one or two pieces of equipment every few years, as I do. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s the right thing to do because life doesn’t happen by the calendar or the clock. Cars break down, batteries die, and stuff happens. The warranty period is really just an arbitrary number. When Dell (or any other company) warranties a battery for 12 months, it’s not saying that they expect the battery to last for 12 months and that everything else is gravy. It’s a way to say that the battery shouldn’t break down in the first 12 months. It could be 13 months or 15 months. But most companies tend to use years for a warranty period. It’s easy.

I think this is a case of it being a blue rule. I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that there are two types of rules: Red rules and Blue rules. Red rules can’t be broken under any circumstance. They usually deal with health, safety, legal, ethics, and BIG financial. Blue rules can be bent for the customer. This is a blue rule. I don’t know the figures, but I’m sure there aren’t that many laptop batteries that die between 12 and 13 months. Allowing the occasional customer to stretch the warranty to 12 ½ months isn’t going to result in a BIG financial hit for Dell or any major computer company. Never mind that losing Bart would also mean losing a half-a-million dollars in business per year.

TD Bank (formerly Commerce Bank) opens its offices at 7:30 AM and closes at 8 PM, which is already a larger spread than most banks. But if you arrive at 7:20 AM or 8:10 PM, they’ll let you in – they just don’t advertise it. We’ve all had the frustrating experience of arriving at a store two minutes after closing and not being able to make a quick purchase.

Why does TD Bank do this when other banks don’t? It’s because they decided that their customers, big or small, were worth an extra 20 minutes a day of service. It’s because it knows that nothing always works the way we want it to work. And people sometimes show up a couple of minutes late.

If you owned a restaurant, would you refuse to accept a coupon and sacrifice a customer because it expired the day before? It would be a pretty stupid thing to do. It’s the same with warranties.

Don’t let your rules get in the way or customer experience. You’ll lose more than you know.

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Your chat scripts are driving your customers away!

October 28, 2010

I contacted my cable company this week to try to get a problem fixed that had allegedly been fixed three times before. My digital picture was breaking up on occasion, especially during prime time or important sporting events. The last technician who came to my house to fix it said that if his solution didn’t work, the problem was likely a switcher my next-door neighbor was using.

After a summer of light TV watching, the problem started happening again, which told me my next-door neighbor had started watching TV again and using the switcher. This time, however, in an attempt to save time, I decided to talk to someone from the cable company’s online chat. “Jerome” came on line to help me. Let’s see if you can spot the scripted dialogue.

 

Jerome: Hello Steve. Thank you for contacting (company) live chat support. My name is Jerome. Please give me one moment to review your information.

(pause)

Jerome: I do apologize hearing this from you and I know where you are coming from. Let me address this concern for you in the best way I can.

(pause)

Jerome: I understand you have a concern on your cable service by having a break picture and the technician visit about this concern as well. I definitely know where you’re coming from (Haven’t we heard this line before?) and I truly apologize for the inconvenience. I ams determined to resolve your issue today and I know we can do this together. I would like to verify how long have you been dealing with this concern, please? If you won’t mind me asking.

 

Actually, I do mind him asking because he did tell me he was taking a moment to review my information. If he reviewed my information, he’d know the answer.

Steve: It’s got to be over a year. Have you checked my problem history? Everything should be in there.

Jerome: I am very sorry to hear that this issue happened to you. I can understand the frustration when something is not working the way it is supposed to. I am glad you came to chat. I will do my best to assist you in resolving this issue. Let me check it through the account.

 

At this point, I’ve already heard three actual apologies, two “I know where you’re coming from” statements and one “I can understand the frustration when something is not working” statement as well as a couple of statements saying he’ll do his best to help me. It’s been 3-4 minutes already and he still hasn’t helped me because 90% of what he has said came from pre-written scripts. Which doesn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.

Then, some more scripts:

Jerome: I am very happy to check this for you. Please allow me two minutes to put you on hold and check this account and get back to you after. Is it okay with you?

Steve: It’s fine (considering he told me earlier that he reviewed my account, which apparently he hadn’t)

Jerome: Okay. Please allow me two minutes to check this account. By the way, while waiting for your account to pull up, I will share a feature that you can truly benefit from. Do you know that we have Pay Direct?

 

Because of his scripts, he has now violated the first rule of up-selling and cross-selling – never try to sell the customer something when he’s upset and/or you haven’t solved the problem yet.

After I said “No, I’m really not interested”, he popped in another scripted statement that started with “Great! I know this will help you a lot” before proceeding to explain the program.

The chat went on like that for another 15 minutes while he used script after script and didn’t solve my problem.  Not once did I feel the empathy he had so badly tried to convince me he had at the beginning of the conversation. Finally, I said goodbye, called the customer service line and spoke to a real person who could hear the emotion in my voice and seemed to jettison the scripts.

Here’s the thing:  Customers aren’t stupid. They know a script as soon as they hear it or see it. They know a script is impersonal, doesn’t address the issue, doesn’t show empathy, and is created not for their benefit but for the benefit of the company. Remember form letters? Those were the scripts we used to send by mail. Customers knew it was a form letter then too.

Supervisors and companies need to trust their people to say the right things, ask the right questions, give the right answers, and solve the problems without scripts. To do this, these people need to be trained, trained, trained. After training them, test them on their knowledge and ability to solve problems. Then let them do their jobs.

If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. If you hire them, educate them. Your customers will appreciate it.

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The answer to increased business in this bad economy is simple. So why don’t companies get it?

July 9, 2010

During the past year, I’ve reported on surveys by the Strativity Group and Right Now Technologies that say that customers will spend more with companies that provide excellent service and that they feel duty-bound to tell others about bad experiences. This week, American Express released a new customer service survey that confirms and adds to the understanding that customers will base their purchasing decisions on how well they or others are treated.

If three surveys (and probably more) in one year are saying the same things, why aren’t companies getting it? Do they think that the attitudes don’t apply to their customer relationships? Or have they forgotten why they’re in business? (Hint: to serve their customers)

Here are some highlights from the U.S. portion of the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, which was conducted in the U.S. and 11 other countries:

  • Americans will spend 9% more with companies that provide excellent service (Strativity said 40% of customers are willing to pay an additional 10%)
  • In the current economic climate, only 37% of Americans believe that companies have increased their focus on providing quality service, 27% say these companies have not changed their customer service attitudes, and 28% say that companies are paying even less attention to good service than before.
  • One in five feel companies take them for granted.
  • 81% are more likely to repeat business after a good service experience and 52% will never do business with a company again after a poor experience.
  • 91% of Americans base their decision to do business with a company on its level of customer service.

As we also know, the internet has changed the landscape of communication about customer experiences, but here are some actual numbers from the American Express survey:

  • 48% use online postings or blogs to get others’ opinions about how companies treat their customers
  • 57% put more emphasis on negative blog and social networking reviews than on positive ones.

What are your customers saying about you?

Frankly, these statistics should not be surprising. All you have to do is have casual conversation about service with people you know. As a consultant in customer experience, I could write a book on how people feel about the companies they do business with based purely on anecdotal evidence. When people hear what I do for a living, they often say, “Let me tell you a story about what happened to me …”

The news isn’t all bad. Some 86% of customers say they’re willing to give companies a second chance if their previous experiences have been great and 50% of Americans say it usually takes two bad service experiences before they’ll walk away.

Worldwide, consumers in 11 of 12 countries surveyed feel customer service has become more important in the current economy (The only exception was the Netherlands. Maybe they’re too focused on the World Cup).

While we aren’t surprised, companies still can’t figure out how to claim that “Great customer service” mantle.  Maybe it’s because 80% of companies believe they provide a superior customer experience but only 8% of consumers agree (Bain and Company, 2005).

Here are some things you can do:

  • Analyze each of your customer touch points. Where do you touch the customer? How well are you doing in that touch point? What can you do to improve the experience during that touch point?
  • Make each customer feel that you are on his or her side. Be a customer advocate. If you’re worried about spending the company’s money, remember the statistic about how much more happy customers will spend.
  • Give your people the authority to act on behalf of the customer. Companies quash this authority with everything from overbearing, ridiculous rules to providing scripts that tell customer service representatives what they can and can’t say. We have all had too many experiences where we just knew the employee would do something right for us but was restrained by management.

The numbers in these surveys don’t lie. None of these surveys are outliers – totally different from the others. They say the same thing: Customers will pay more and do more business with companies who provide excellent experiences and they will gladly spread the word about companies who don’t.  If your company’s customers are not in the first category, you’re doing something wrong.

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What would you say if a Senator asked you if you served your customers’ best interests?

June 4, 2010

I was watching the Congressional hearings on financial regulation last month and was startled by the way the leaders of our financial firms dodged and failed to answer Sen. Susan Collins’s question, “Do you do things with your customers’ best interests in mind?”

How hard a question is that to answer? How arrogant do you have to be to not anticipate that question and prepare for it? Worse than that, how could they not be able to say unequivocally that they do?

Even if you’re a cynic and accept the idea that brokerage firms’ sole purpose these days is to make as much money as they can in any way that they can, it’s still not a hard question to answer. A brokerage firm sells financial products, offers financial advice, and facilitates investments. With each customer transaction or consulting agreement, the brokerage firm makes mucho money. If the customer is happy, he invests more with the firm or buys other financial products, making the firm even more money. If the customer feels she can trust you, she will trust you with her money, which allows you to use that money to make more money. So who is the most important person here? In whose interest should the firm be working?

Apologists for the industry, especially Goldman Sachs, have pointed out that investments are a gamble and if a client wants to take a chance on a gamble, who are the firms to stand in his way? Apparently, they have forgotten that I go to a financial “advisor” for advice based on the expertise she has that I don’t. If I want to make a stupid financial gamble, I depend on my “advisor” to let me know it’s a bad idea. She should have my best interests in mind.

A client asked me last year if I would be willing to condense my 8-hour seminar into 6 hours. Chopping two hours off of the program wouldn’t be a disaster, but it would take away some of the seminar’s effectiveness. I told the client, “I am willing to do that, but I must tell you that I don’t believe your people will get the same benefits, information and understanding that they would get if they attended the full 8 hours. If you’re okay with that, I’ll do it.”

While I felt the need to say this for a 6-hour version of the program, I would not have considered doing the 8-hour program in 4 hours. I would have told the client that I didn’t feel it would be in her best interest to remove that much content. That’s my job.

What are your customers’ best interests? Are you selling them products because you want to sell them or because your customers really want and need them? Are you twisting yourself into a pretzel in trying to explain why your latest policy change is good for the customer when in reality it is only good for you?

The week before the Congressional hearings, I laughed at the absurdity as I watched the CEO of Spirit Airlines explain why its new policy of charging $45 for carry-on bags was “good” for customers. He explained that with less bags going in the overhead compartments, people will get on and off the planes more quickly. So, he’s saying that by bringing a second bag on the plane, I am stopping other passengers from getting off the plane more quickly – it’s my fault! And because it’s my fault, I am penalized $45. He’s protecting the poor passengers who have to wait while I get my bag from above the seat. If you believe that …

The customer/provider relationship is a partnership. You provide products, services and advice with my best interests in mind, and I spend the money to purchase those products, services and advice. When you have my best interests in mind, I am happy and I continue to buy from you. When you don’t, I leave. And when you combine not protecting your customer’s interests, doing it in a shady way, and growing so big that you’re “too big to fail,” you shouldn’t complain when you’re called before a Congressional committee.

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Your customers’ expectations will decide their happiness. Do you have any idea what those expectations are?

March 1, 2010

I’ve worked with more than 100 different companies during the past 15 years, helping them provide great experiences for their customers. Prior to working with a new company, I usually go to their website or visit their offices and take a look at their mission statements or values statements. Invariably, the statements include something about aiming to “exceed customer expectations.” Then I look around the office or the website for the statements that list their customers’ expectations. And I never find it.

Customer expectations drive every aspect of their relationship with you. How can you exceed those expectations if you don’t know what they are?

I can hear you now – “We know what our customers’ expectations are! We just don’t list them on a plaque or on the website.” So let me ask you, are you sure? When was the last time you asked your customers – point blank – about their expectations?

I worked with a manufacturer that sold high-end products in jewelry stores. They hired me to teach their sales reps how to get the store’s salespeople to sell more of their products. The first thing I did was interview some of the company’s top sales reps about what the store salespeople want and expect. They gladly volunteered their opinions, many of which indicated that expectations were higher than the company could deliver.

I then interviewed managers and owners of the jewelry stores that sold the products and asked them the same questions about wants and expectations. It turned out their expectations were totally different that what the company’s sales reps thought they were. This disconnect was a major factor in the store’s salespeople’s willingness to push the company’s products. I had asked the questions the company should have been asking regularly.

If you’re like most people and companies, this conversation with your customers is long overdue.

We should be asking the customer about his or her expectations regularly – once a year or more. Questions could include:

  • What are five (or ten) expectations you have of your sales representative?
  • What do expect when you call customer service?
  • What kind of time expectations do you have when it comes to emergencies?
  • What do you expect when you open a new account with us?
  • What do you expect after the job is done?
  • What kind of follow-up do you expect?
  • How often do you expect us to keep in touch during a project?
  • What will make this project (training, product, event) successful for you?
  • What kind of information do you expect us to provide to you?

Additional questions should deal with particular issues depending on the product, service, company and situation.

Once you have gathered the information from these “expectations” questions, your team should get together and brainstorm how to meet these expectations, who is responsible for doing so, and the resources you’ll need.

Companies spend vast amounts of money after the interaction asking customers whether their expectations were met. It’s time we spent some time and money finding out their expectations before we worry about whether we met them or not.

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Are your people being trained on how to properly communicate by email?

January 27, 2010

As a manager, do you just assume your people know how to write properly? If your people are communicating with their external customers through email (as many are), are you risking long-term relationships by focusing on their telephone and verbal skills and ignoring their writing training?

The “e” world is fast becoming businesses’ favorite form of communication. To use computer terms, we are engaging in e-versations™.

Release 1.0 was email.

Release 2.0 was the online chat.

Release 3.0 is social media.

We are leaving our people to figure out the process, words to use and the etiquette of these three releases without any training or advice from management. This may be because many managers have never received any training themselves.

I used to teach “Business Writing.” As late as 2000, most business writing focused exclusively on letters, memos, and reports. In 2001, Cingular Wireless contracted me to provide them with a customer service email program. But my appeals to other companies fell on deaf ears.

The world of e-versations™ has only become more complicated since then. To answer this complicated landscape, many companies have reverted to the forms that made their telephone conversations with customers seem stilted and impersonal: scripts.

If I’m going to talk to a customer service representative or any of your employees, I expect to be treated as a person, not as a situation you can address with a script. If your people are talking to their customers on the phone, you would expect that talk in a conversational way. Now, they are increasingly talking to customers by email and chat. Customers expect the same conversational, non-scripted responses. If you don’t think your customers can see that your “chat rep” pressed a key that threw a pre-scripted response on the screen, think again.

As e-versations™ become more popular in most cases and the norm in many, your people need training in how to write conversationally and to be more customer-centric in their responses. This is essential as the world of customer communication moves forward.

Throw away the scripts. Train your people. It’s not rocket service™.

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Prefer Chat? Phone? EMail? Customers want problems fixed, no matter what the technology is

January 11, 2010

I decided to do some non-scientific research this week on Facebook about the way people feel about customer service chats as opposed to speaking with a live agent or sending an email. I expected that a large majority of responses would have preferred a live person on the phone, but that was not the case. However, I did come to a conclusion based on the responses.

The conversation started plainly. Janet noted, “I would rather make a phone call. But then again, I’m a technophobe.” Yes, quite a few people out there are still afraid to talk through the computer. Fear noted. (The names have been changed to protect the annoyed)

Then Louise revealed something about why people might want to talk to a phone rep — “I usually prefer to make a call, but only so they can hear how angry and pissed off they are making me.” Hmm. There is always a group of customers who not only want something done, but also want to let you know how angry they are. The telephone is clearly the best way to express that. It’s easier to ignore something that’s written.

Email got a clear “thumbs down.” Andrew said, “I ignore emails all day long. I can only imagine most companies do too” and Sue came down on the side of live chat, dissing email in the process – “I agree they’ll get my money faster if they have Live Chat. If I have to wait for an email response or a person to call, my purchase greatly diminishes.” Even those who seemed to like the idea of email had no confidence in the medium. Robert said, “I would prefer to send an email for non-urgent problems … time management. However (and it’s a big, HOWEVER) (I’ve) never found a company that responds quickly and effectively to email.” This caused Veronica to add, “Robert, I’m with you. All I want is help with a minimum of interaction. Email does that for me. Of course, when I get put into an email queue with a message that I’ll hear back within five working days, I want to call to let them know how their customer service sucks eggs.”

Are you feeling the anger out there?

Only Linda gave an unqualified endorsement to chat. She said, “Totally agree with that one, Steve! LOVE the companies with online chats/agents.”

But it was Monica who really blew me away with her well-expressed analysis of the pros and cons (mostly cons) of all three:

“I like to chat with a live agent on the telephone. I never seem to have any luck getting the info I need while “chatting” and can tell from their tone of typing that they either don’t understand what I need, don’t know the correct solution or don’t really care.

“I have been trying to email the United States Postal Service regarding a recent order.  When I speak with the technical support on the phone, they forward me to the home page site, which doesn’t tell me how to cancel an order. And then when I explain everything in the email, send the email to the link they have on the page,  and then have the email come back to me as undeliverable…. I now have a six-month subscription for a book of stamps (although I’m getting six books every month). Thank goodness they are the ‘Forever’ stamps, because I’m going to have them forever…

“I can’t get through to them via email, can’t get the customer support I need via telephone technical support. Can’t cancel the order on my account history page, and I can’t for the life
of me remember my USPS user name and password. There is no more customer service at all.”

My conclusion?  Customers (except possibly the technophobes) are willing to try any form of interaction to have their problem resolved. But it’s not technology that creates a great customer experience. It’s the people – well-trained or not well-trained, customer-friendly or not customer-friendly, who make the difference. Millions of dollars of technology will do nothing unless the human being handling the interaction, designing the website, or writing the email or chat knows what he or she is doing.

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Flyers hate TSA because of its policies; They hate companies for the same reason

January 5, 2010

Flyers are ticked-off at the Transportation Security Administration once again as the TSA institutes new travel restrictions in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack Christmas Day. The reason they’re upset is deeper than being inconvenienced during the last hour of an international flight. It’s the same reason people are angry at certain companies.

People accept inconveniences every day. We accept the idea of one-way streets and that we must accompany our children at the swimming pool and not just leave them there. We put out our recycling once or twice a week and think nothing of it. We also deal with TV networks that stop showing a particular TV show for a month or two before starting it up again.

Yet we get really annoyed when the TSA institutes new security rules in the face of a new terrorist attack. Actually, we were annoyed already, but now we’re even more annoyed than we were. Why do we pick on the poor TSA?

Flyers pick on the Transportation Security Administration because most of the inconvenient security measures they take make no sense to most people. We don’t understand why we have to take off our shoes, separate our liquids, and separate the computer and the jacket in separate trays. We don’t understand why we can take five 3 oz. bottles on the plane but not one 4 oz. bottle. We don’t understand because the TSA has failed to tell us why or the reason they give is not a good one.

“We’re keeping you safe” is not a good reason when you realize you’ve left your computer back at the Quiznos right after walking past the security gate to leave the basically empty airport and the three (count ‘em, three) TSA employees refuse to let you go back to retrieve it. One of those employees could have escorted me back to the Quiznos (about 500 feet away) but policy is policy.

So what does this have to do with customer service? Everything. As the airline’s customer, I am also the airport’s customer and therefore, the TSA’s customer. My customer experience comes from the combined efforts of all three, plus the various stores and restaurants in the airport, including Quiznos (who found the computer and put it behind the counter so nobody would steal it). And when I, or any other customer isn’t given a good reason for rules and policies, we become angry, frustrated and capable of doing irrational things we wouldn’t normally do, including yell and scream at customer service reps and managers of retail stores.

What policies do you have and how are you explaining them to customers? Does each of your policies and rules have a good reason for being a policy? If they do, explain the reason to your customers when they protest the rule – but it had better be a good reason. “We’ll lose money if the coupon is turned in a day late” is not anything the customer cares about. The customer only knows she couldn’t get there yesterday because there were six inches of snow on the ground.

People understand we need  rules, even those which are inconvenient.  They also understand that the customer/provider relationship is a two-way conversation: I will abide by your rule and accept the inconvenience if you tell me why it’s important and especially, why it benefits me. Keep that in mind when you’re telling a customer he has to wait or can’t have something because you have your rules.

I’ve yet to find anybody who understands how taking away our blankets for the last hour of a flight will make me any safer than I was the day before this incompetent would-be terrorist set his pants on fire. Until they explain that and all the other rules they have, people will continue to use the TSA as their favorite conversational punching bag.

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It’s never about you even if the customer’s an idiot

December 22, 2009

One of the sad facts of business most people choose to ignore (or never learned) is it is never about you. Interactions with customers are never about what you want, what you need, what you care about, or anything else having to do with you. If you want to matter to your customers, what you care about doesn’t matter. This is especially true when customers are upset – which is why you’re there.

If your customer is angry, deal with it. It’s not about you.

If your customer wants you to go the extra mile, do it. It’s not about you.

If your customer wants you to do something faster, do what you can to get it done fast. It’s not about you.

If your customer has had a bad day and is taking it out on you, it’s too bad. It’s not about you.

If your customer has his or her own way of doing things that is effective for him or her, try to work within that system. It’s not about you.

If your customer is a horse’s you-know-what, even then, it’s not about you (this doesn’t include abusive customers.

It’s always about your customers. They’re your best friends.

I had just finished speaking at a conference when a member of the audience walked up to me and handed me a pay stub from a recent paycheck. I wasn’t quite sure why this woman wanted me to see her pay stub unless it was to show me that she made more money than I did.

I looked at her quizzically, and before I could say anything, she said, “Look what it says on the bottom of the pay stub.” I glanced down and there it was: a revelation that told me this company “gets it.”

“This paycheck is brought to you by your customers.”

My eyes grew wide and so did my smile. This company reminded its people every other week just who was responsible for the company’s success and that without that success, there would be no company. And there would be no job.

They could have communicated this by putting a huge poster on the wall, but that wouldn’t have made the impact that seeing this statement associated with the employee’s pay had made. In other words, the food you put on your table, the car you just bought, the college education you’re paying for, the ability to pay for the mortgage, the vacation in the Bahamas, and that new videogame system are all brought to you by your customers. What nice people they are to give you this money!

Now, we know that you worked very hard and you’re very good at what you do, but in the end, if the customer doesn’t pay the bills, there’s no place for you to do this work.

Customers are your best friends. They make sure your salary is paid. Or, if you’re in your own business, they make sure you make a profit – and remain in business. That’s why it’s never about you.

Think about how you treat your best friends. If they’ve been good friends for a long time, you’re clearly doing something right. You’re probably putting their needs before yours, giving them the benefit of the doubt and sharing the responsibilities for whatever you decide to do together. In other words, when you’re best friends, you make it about them and they make it about you. Now think about a time when you got into a fight with your best friend. Odds are that something happened where you made it about you (or vice versa).

The customer isn’t always right. The customer isn’t always nice. But it’s always about the customer. So next time you begin to think, “Who does this guy think he is?” keep repeating “It’s not about me … it’s not about me … it’s not about me.” Then, make it a positive experience for the customer.

When you make it about them, they’ll make it about you.

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You can’t make all customers happy all the time … but try

December 8, 2009

One of things I teach is customers are more apt accept your answer or your policy if you explain why. But what happens if the customer decides not to accept your reason?

Shirley (not her real name) called me one day to tell me she had done exactly what I had told her, avoiding saying “policy” and instead explaining the reason. This particular customer refused to accept the reason and was very angry after Shirley said there was nothing more she could do.

The watch company Shirley works for accepts repairs in two ways: through the jewelry stores that sell the watch or directly from the customer. Both repairs end up in the company’s repair center, but the company doesn’t accept credit cards for repairs while the stores do. However, the stores also charge more than the company does for the same repair.

For this customer, Shirley explained that the number of direct repairs they get doesn’t justify the money the credit card company charges them. In other words, she was telling the customer he wasn’t worth the extra cost. Not only didn’t he buy her reason, he promised never to buy one of their watches again.

I understood her reasoning but asked her, “How do most people pay for things these days, especially when it involves sending something or ordering something through the mail?”

She agreed that most people pay with credit cards. She also agreed that they had a right to expect the watch company to accept the cards for repairs. But then she reiterated the reason.

The company didn’t encourage owners to send the watches directly because it wanted the jewelry stores to get the repair business – the direct repair was just a courtesy. So, the company made a conscious decision to accept repairs, but not to accept credit cards for the repairs, despite most people charging such things on their cards.

“I believe your reason is a good one,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that most people expect to pay for repairs with their credit cards. The customer’s expectations are everything. People will decide whether they want to continue to do business with you based on whether you met, exceeded or didn’t meet their expectations.

In the end, every decision a company makes regarding policies and procedures has a consequence. You may be perfectly right in your reason but the customer didn’t think so. In the customer’s view, you weren’t being very customer-centric. Your reason said you cared more about the company’s bottom line than making it convenient for the customer.”

When faced with these types of situations, you’ve got to make a decision: Will I lose more money by disappointing a certain amount of customers than I will by doing what the customer wants? This company apparently decided they would lose more money if they did the latter. That’s perfectly okay, but the customer will still be unhappy.

Every organization has to strike a balance between making the customer happy and not giving away the store. Sometimes, the reason for the policy is valid and will hurt the company if you don’t enforce it. Other times, it’s worth giving up something to make the customer happy. You can’t make every customer happy all the time. But you do have to measure the consequences of not doing so.

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