Customer Care Tip – Thank your customer for bringing the problem to your attention. Few people enjoy dealing with customer complaints. Human nature has us wanting to avoid painful situations. It is not pleasant to hear our product is defective or our service is substandard.
We can learn a wealth of information from our complaining customers if we approach the situation as an improvement opportunity. How can we do this? We need to view the information as positive feedback rather than a negative complaint. We must prove to the customer through our response that their sharing their problem is valued.
Do not take it personal. Do not get defensive. They are not attacking you! It is simply business. Make sure you listen to their issue. Take notes. Repeat their concerns back to them. You are verifying you heard the issue correctly.
Thank them for bring it to your attention. It is okay to apologize to the customer. Apologizing is not accepting blame. It is simply being courteous. It’s accepting responsibility to move past the current issue to a resolution
Work to resolve the issue in a timely manner. Thank your customer for bringing the issue to your attention.
Never forget that unhappy customers tell their friends about their bad experience. They do it by posting on Twitter or Facebook their bad experience.
You must let them know how much you appreciate them telling you they had an issue. I believe all they really want is a listening ear, an acceptance of the issue, and a satisfactory resolution. Many times it is as simple as saying I am sorry and correcting the deficiency.
Always tell them thank you. You say thank you even when they share problems you wish you didn’t have to handle.
Customer Care Tip – Thank your customer for bringing the problem to your attention.
Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s work has appeared in six different Lifeway Christian publications as well as The Baptist Program, Thinking About Suicide.com, Poetry & Prose Magazine, vox poetica, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Bewildering Stories, Beyond Imagination Literary Magazine and more. His short stories The Cup, Invasion of the Prairie Dogs, Miracle at the Gibson Farm: A Christmas Story, and The Paintings as well as Gone Electric: A Poetry Collection are available on Amazon.com.
