Most companies have an external clientele of some sort. Even if a company does not have clients from the general public, if the clients are employees from another business or businesses (B2B) customer service is very important for maintaining a healthy business relationship, referrals, overall reputation, and ultimately continued growth. There is not a lot of talk about dealing with happy customers because they are already happy, right? There is not much more to do. But there are many strategies out there for dealing with unhappy customers because those are the ones that end up leaving bad reviews, circulate bad word of mouth, and will not be patronizing a company anymore if they can help it. If you want to make sure your strategy for dealing with unhappy customers is as good as possible, check it against the one listed here.
First, because being unhappy almost always means being unpleasant, it is very important for representatives of a company to remain calm. Remember that the customer’s problem is with the company or company’s product/service and not with you personally. Getting offended leads to a cascade of other negative consequences. Plus it is difficult for most employees to listen properly to the issue while they are focused on getting heated themselves, which is a great segue to another important aspect of the strategy.
Listening is key to dealing with unhappy customers because if the issue happened once and the customer is unhappy, imagine how much more unhappy they will be when it happens again because the wrong solution was applied. To formulate the proper solution to the issue it is best to listen as best as possible to the customer and capture all of the information about exactly what went wrong. When there seem to be multiple issues all grouped together, make sure to apologize for the issue and the corresponding inconvenience, for each issue. Empathy goes a long way to calming down unhappy customers.
Few things ultimately turn around a bad situation with an unhappy customer than developing and deploying the right solution. One of the key ways a company representative will know it’s the right solution is by listening, but also by clearly communicating the solution to the customer ahead of time. Assuming they agree with the solution then the only thing left is proper delivery of the solution. If they do not agree, then go back to whatever options you have available to please the customer or recommend them to someone higher up if you know they have solutions the customer is looking for.
First, because being unhappy almost always means being unpleasant, it is very important for representatives of a company to remain calm. Remember that the customer’s problem is with the company or company’s product/service and not with you personally. Getting offended leads to a cascade of other negative consequences. Plus it is difficult for most employees to listen properly to the issue while they are focused on getting heated themselves, which is a great segue to another important aspect of the strategy.
Listening is key to dealing with unhappy customers because if the issue happened once and the customer is unhappy, imagine how much more unhappy they will be when it happens again because the wrong solution was applied. To formulate the proper solution to the issue it is best to listen as best as possible to the customer and capture all of the information about exactly what went wrong. When there seem to be multiple issues all grouped together, make sure to apologize for the issue and the corresponding inconvenience, for each issue. Empathy goes a long way to calming down unhappy customers.
Few things ultimately turn around a bad situation with an unhappy customer than developing and deploying the right solution. One of the key ways a company representative will know it’s the right solution is by listening, but also by clearly communicating the solution to the customer ahead of time. Assuming they agree with the solution then the only thing left is proper delivery of the solution. If they do not agree, then go back to whatever options you have available to please the customer or recommend them to someone higher up if you know they have solutions the customer is looking for.
