All small businesses will eventually come face to face with one of the most feared entities imaginable – the irate customer. No matter what has set them off, it is up to you to diffuse the situation and to appease them as best you can. You want to keep them as a customer or at least not send them out of the store with a terrible story to tell everyone they know. Remember, word of mouth advertising is the best advertising, and bad reviews can be the kiss of death for a business.
MISTAKES ARE INEVITABLE
No one is going to be right all the time. Whether you’ve promised something you can’t deliver on, messed up your time management, or your sales associate said you carried something you don’t, mistakes are inevitable. This fact of life isn’t going to make the customer any happier that it happened. Curbing the fallout of mistakes can take the form of a heart-felt apology, discount toward a future purchase, or other customer service-related event.
LISTEN TO HOW YOU SPEAK
When you have a loud customer, don’t match their tone or volume. Speak softly and make sure to reiterate what they are saying. By saying back to the customer what they are telling you (i.e. “I hear that you are upset because your package hasn’t arrived, I can understand that”) you are asserting that you are listening to their problem and want to resolve it. By remaining calm and not raising your voice, you don’t turn it into a battle.
DON’T BE IN A RUSH
When dealing with an irate customer, don’t expect to wrap it up quickly. If you look distracted or the customer perceives that you have somewhere else to be, they will also believe that their problems and they themselves do not matter to you. Always take as much time as needed to talk to the customer, and not speed it along. This patience also needs to be seen in waiting your turn to talk. If the customer is very upset and letting loose a tirade, this may take a while. Wait it out, and then calmly state your case.
NO MATTER WHO’S FAULT IT WAS, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Customers want to hear that you are in control, don’t blame it on shipping, the post office, your Uncle Fred, or the dog down the street. Own the problem and offer up solutions that the customer can choose from to help remedy the situation. By blaming anyone else (even if it really was a screw up at the post office or that pesky dog) you show the customer that it isn’t your problem to fix. They want you to fix it.
There will always be someone unhappy with something about your business, how you handle it will set the scene for your customer service reputation. Always try to remedy the problem as quickly as you can, and try to keep satisfied customers.
