Marilyn Sherman

Once again, I am absolutely blown away by the lack of customer service displayed in today’s competitive market, and this time from my own neighborhood bank! I love the convenience of my bank being inside my local grocery store. It’s so close and the long hours that they are open, make it nice to conduct transactions on my time schedule. However, just because it’s local and it’s a bank I have been going to for two and a half years, I was amazed how not one person recognized me today.

I am constantly surprised at the lack of customer service I encounter. Just last night, my husband and I were searching for an American flag to send as a gift to a friend who always wanted one. You’d be amazed how hard it is to find an American flag…they say it’s ‘out of season’. Who knew. So, we were referred to a party store, you know where they sell hats, balloons, paper products, gifts, anything for any kind of party.

It was about 8:50 last night when we pulled up. The lights of the store seemed off, but then I saw people inside and I realized the balloon displays made the windows look dark. Then we saw the sign on the doors that posted the hours of operation. They close at 9:00pm, so we had 10 minutes to shop. At least that’s what I thought.

We walked in as they were turning off the lights and a group of young people behind the counter looked at us, daring us to come in at this late hour. They didn’t say “Hello” or “Welcome to Party City”. No, they looked at us and said with an annoyed tone of voice “We close in five minutes.”

I stopped in my tracks, not wanting to invade their space anymore then I already had and asked “Do you have any American Flags?”. They told me no, they’re out of season. What is that? Then as I turned to walk out of the store, one of them followed me and locked the door behind me. They were in such a hurry to close the door it made me not be in a hurry to come back at anytime, let alone 10 minutes before closing.

At least they didn’t have the title of Customer Service Manager. With a title like that, you would assume that the person is at least versed in customer service. Not so at our car dealership. My husband took our car in for it’s checkup that included rotating the tires. After a couple of days, our friend noticed that the cap that covers the lug nuts was missing. This isn’t a hub cap, but a cover that’s about 5” in diameter that snaps into place. Apparently, the service attendant forgot to replace the cap after he rotated our tires.

We went back to the dealership and let them know that we needed the cap to be put back on. The service attendant wanted to see our receipt from the service call, to prove what date we had our car serviced. What? I know for a fact that they have records to show exactly what date our car was serviced, who serviced it and at what time. I know this, because if I am late bringing in the car for a scheduled check up, I get a cute little letter reminding me what date I came in and what date I need to come it. But, this service person (I use the term ‘service’ loosely here) turned us away and told us to come back with a receipt. We left. We felt a little confused and a lot put off. Then we got busy with our lives. We travel, we work, we travel for work. Then we had another service checkup and realized we never had our cap replaced and now, 3000 miles had come and gone. My husband took the car in and requested the cap be replaced and the ‘service’ attendant told him it had been too long, and how could he prove that it wasn’t stolen.

Stolen? I have never heard of a rush on lug nut covers…But, he came back from the dealership very upset, and no lug nut cover. So, I called the Customer Service Manager, hoping he knew something about managing customer service. I explained to him that we came in once right after we noticed the cap missing and were turned away. I told him we came back with the receipt but it was after church on a Sunday, and they weren’t open. I told him we then waited for our next scheduled service time to come in and get it replaced then. MUCH to my surprise, he didn’t apologize. He didn’t say how sorry he was for the inconvenience. He didn’t say “You must be frustrated to not have had someone take care of this right away the first time you came in”. No, he asked a question. Asking questions is fine, you always want to gather information to assess the situation. However, he asked a question to build a case AGAINST us! “Which tire had the missing cap?” I told him it was the left side, rear tire.” To which he said, “Why didn’t your husband see that it was missing when he picked up the car? If it was on the drivers side, clearly he would have noticed it.”. I was shocked. I calmly said, “Probably because he trusted that when he brought the car in for service that the attendants would replace all the parts. He didn’t know he had to check their work (now we know).”

Then, he shocked me again and told me that we had waited an awful long time and maybe someone had stole the cap, you just never know. Ah, just makes you feel good about being a customer, doesn’t it? And, we’re not talking about really expensive custom rims…we’re talking about a $45 cap that covers lug nuts. That’s when I started to get loud. I usually keep my cool, but when he took an accusatory tone over a $45 cap, I had to give him a little piece of my mind. He put me on hold to see if they had the cap in stock, came back on the line and told me to come in and someone would snap it back on.

Yikes. Can you imagine losing a $30,000 customer over a $45 part? This particular car dealership wouldn’t have if the Customer Service Manager put a little customer service in his title.

Marilyn Sherman

Helping people get a front-row seat in life!

www.MarilynSherman.com

You blew it and you knew it. Your customer is understandably upset. Thankfully, they are communicating the problem to you (although you don’t seem very thankful at the time), knowing that it’s better they bring an issue to your attention then to go away, never use your product or service again. Plus, the worse case scenario could be they tell all of their friends about it and you now have ‘negative word of mouth’ advertising.

How do you handle an angry customer? What do you say to them, on the spot, to defuse their anger and perhaps be a hero in the end? Follow this script:

#1. Apologize

I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised by how many front-line employees who are willing to sell out management or a co-worker thinking ‘hey, I didn’t do it!’. But, if you work for the company that in some way let down a customer, you need to own up to it. “On behalf of (insert the name of your company here) I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience”.

#1. Empathize with the customer

Make the customer know that what they are feeling is understandable. “I know that if (fill in the mistake here) happened to me, I would be (insert customers emotion here). Basically here, you are saying, man if that happened to me, I sure would be upset too. In fact, you could really score some points by going a little bit further. “If that happened to me, I would be really upset. I’d be even more upset than you are right now! So I appreciate how calm you actually are under these circumstances.” This will only work if you are sincere. You don’t want to sound patronizing to a customer.

#3. Thank them for bringing the issue to your attention

We all know that it’s harder to bring in a new customer than to keep an existing one. So you should do whatever it takes to keep an existing customer happy so that they come back again and again. What you don’t want is for people to be unhappy with your company and silently go off never to be heard from again. Thank them for bringing it to your attention and let them know how you appreciate the opportunity to make it up to them.

#4. Ask them how you can make it up to them

Many people are scared to ask a customer, especially an angry customer, what can they do to make it up to them. However, if you ask a customer what they want, many times they will ask for less than what you were willing to give them. For example, I was at a nice hotel before a speaking engagement and the windows had a popping sound that was quite disturbing. I called downstairs to ask what the problem was, and had anyone ever complained about this weird noise before. The operator said they never had any complaints, but she would send an engineer up right away.

The engineer came up and told me that the noise was due to the sun beating down on windows that don’t fit the frames of the windows. The management at the hotel would have to spend too much money to replace the windows, so he comes up an average of 2 times a day telling customers that the sounds would stop as soon as the sun went down. What a difference from the operators’ account of the situation. I appreciated the explanation, but the sound never stopped. I called 2 more times to talk to the manager on duty, and no one returned my call. The next morning, I met the meeting planner and I told her of my situation. She told me to go and tell the front desk and ask for half of my room charge back.

I approached the front desk, prepared to tell the manager what my complaint was and when he or she would ask me what I would like to make up for a poor night’s sleep, I was prepared to say ‘half my room charge would be fine’. Much to my surprise, when I told the manager about the situation, she went right for the quick fix. She said “you shouldn’t have to pay for your room. Let me waive the whole charge for last night.” I was happy, but I realized, she could have simply asked for what I wanted and saved half the money she gave back to me.

When you our your company messes up with a customer, and then you fix it, you could actually be a hero to your customer. Customers who have a problem that is immediately fixed gives them a better impression than if nothing went wrong at all. People are more likely to talk about the service recovery and how great you were. If everything went status quo, then why would they talk about it? This doesn’t mean that you should purposefully plan something to go wrong so you can fix it. There will be plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong! And when they do, try this four step approach to service recovery and watch your customers come back again and again!

See you in the front-row!

Marilyn Sherman

www.MarilynSherman.com Helping people get a front-row seat in life!