Into every life, a little rain must fall. In selling, customer complaints are our rain.
Salespeople hate negativity. Sometimes, that’s OK; negative messages can be demotivators. However, sometimes negativity has to happen, such as when customers complain. The salesperson (or customer service person) who disregards a complaint risks losing a customer.
Something along these lines happened to me recently. I rarely need a physical office, given the nature of my work; however, for those occasions, I have a membership with an executive suite company that allows me ten days a month; it’s very reasonable and convenient. They have several locations in Kansas City, so I can even choose where I work. Sometimes, I use the office for meetings; other times, I use the offices simply when I want to get away from my home office for productivity reasons. One such day reminded me of the importance of handling a customer complaint appropriately.
In this case, I was the complainer. I had a day reserved, and I went to my usual office center (I’m nothing if not a man of habit when it comes to these things). As usual, the receptionists greeted me with a smile and showed me to my office. For the first time, however, I had trouble connecting to the Internet on their network (both wired and wireless). I went to the receptionists’ desk and explained the problem. The receptionist said, “Oh, it’s no big deal. Sometimes it goes off, but it’ll come right back in for you.”
It did come on – for about ten minutes. Then it went off again. As with many of you, e-mail is my lifeline when I’m working in an office. After about an hour, I went to the receptionist’s desk again, and said, “I’ve been here for an hour, and I’ve only had the Net for ten minutes. I think there’s a problem.” The receptionist – whom I hasten to say that I like and had only good experiences prior to this one – said, “Hmmmm….my Internet is working fine. Did you restart your computer?” When I responded that I had done this twice, she said, “Gee, I don’t know, Troy. We haven’t had any complaints today.” I told her – politely – that in fact, she did have a complaint – me. Then I asked her to call the next closest office center that the company had, and switch my reservation to that one. In 5 minutes, I was headed to the other complex.
Now, when I need an office, I go to the other complex (where, I should note, the Internet worked perfectly). And in this episode, there is a lesson on how to handle customer complaints.
Recognize the complaint when it happens. One of the most remarkable comments that the receptionist made to me is, “We haven’t had any complaints.” That told me that she didn’t even recognize the fact that what I was telling her (that a core service wasn’t working) was a problem. When a customer complains, you need to understand that it is a complaint.
Whether it’s important to you, know that it’s important to the customer. I think, upon reflection, the aspect of my little episode that surprised me the most was that the receptionist didn’t seem to understand that the lack of Internet access was an important issue to me – which is even more amazing in this technologically dependent age. Think about it. When a customer complains to you, the issue may seem minor to you – but it’s important to the customer, and you’d better think hard about fixing it. The blasé attitude really shocked me, especially considering my previous experiences at this location.
Don’t say, “It works for everyone else.” If you’re looking for a fabulous way to irritate your customer even more, tell him/her that whatever the problem is, nobody else is having it. This does two things in the customer’s mind. First, it lets them know that they are not important to you in the grand scheme of things (after all, if “everyone else” is fine, who cares about me?). Second, it insinuates, without investigation, that the problem is caused by the complaining customer. When the receptionist says, “Well, it works for me,” I came very close to saying, “Great. I’ll take your computer for the rest of the day, then.”
Forget the blame. At least the receptionists didn’t do this. One of the first reactions that many people have, upon hearing about a problem, is to immediately try to fix blame (usually upon anyone but themselves). Here’s the problem: Your customer doesn’t care about the blame. Your customer cares about getting the service experience that they are expecting. Blaming only wastes time and can irritate the customer.
Fix it. This is the part that your customer really cares about. Figure out what the problem is and at least attempt to fix it, or start the process of fixing the problem. In my situation, my guess is that whatever the fix was, it was outside the domain of the receptionists – but they didn’t even investigate, so I don’t know for sure. Sometimes, YOU can’t fix it, so what’s important is to involve those who can and let the customer know what’s going on.
Make sure the customer buys into the fix. It’s not important if YOU think the problem is solved; it’s important that the CUSTOMER thinks that the problem is solved. In my scenario, we never got to this point, but ultimately you must ask the question, “are you happy? Did we solve your problem?”
Never leave your customer hanging. From the time your customer complains until the time the problem is solved (in their eyes), your customer must believe that you are focusing your attention on fixing the problem. Sometimes, that’s difficult; sometimes you have to depend on others. Here’s what is critical – never go home without touching base with your customer, even if you don’t have a solution yet. Remember – your customer needs to feel that your attention is on the problem.
Obviously, in my case, there were really no adverse consequences to anyone. I simply changed locations, but I didn’t move my business anywhere else. And that’s fine with me; overall, I’m happy. When your customer complains, you might not be as fortunate if you don’t handle the complaint well.
