Everyone
has heard the slogan, “The customer is always right.” And everyone who runs a
business knows that it’s not true.
Customers often are wrong. They complain about silly things – about things that
are their own fault, about the cause of a problem and ways to fix it and,
especially, about what it will cost to fix it to their satisfaction. I’m not
saying they’re always wrong. If you’re smart and listen carefully to their
complaints, you’ll probably discover that they’re right at least 50 percent of
the time, if not more. But the subject at hand is how to handle situations when
they are most-assuredly wrong.
Sometimes customers are more than wrong. Sometimes they may be downright
ornery. One of the hardest things to come to grips with in human nature is the
difficulty people have in admitting mistakes. The more you point out that it’s
their fault, the more they’ll deny it, and the more they’ll hate you for being
right.
So the first thing to realize is that no matter how much in the wrong they may
be, it’s impossible to win an argument with a customer. Winning means they
lose, and nobody likes to lose. So your prize for winning is to kiss off a
customer forever. Even worse, that customer will badmouth you to everyone who
will listen. Studies have shown that a customer disgruntled with a business
will tell on average 15 other people about the bad experience. Odds are great
that those 15 people won’t bother to listen to your side of the story if they
are in need of your services. They’ll just steer clear of you, and give their
business to a competitor. So it pays not to “win” arguments with customers, but
to prevent them from happening or to make the customer feel like the
winner.
This means that even though the customer isn’t always right, you can’t afford
to do away with “the customer is always right” as a basic business philosophy.
The idea behind that slogan is that the customer may not always be right, but
we’d better conduct our business as if he or she is.
Here’s another way of looking at it: “Even when the customer isn’t right, it’s
still our fault, because we didn’t provide him with all the information needed
to understand the situation.” This falls into that realm of preventing
arguments in the first place.
Sometimes customer complaints stem from unrealistic expectations, often
fostered by the business itself. For instance, tire manufacturers are noted for
fielding many complaints about their products. That’s because tire makers tend
to run dramatic ads – we’ve all seen them – touting their brand’s durability.
Along the way, they fail to mention that even the sturdiest brands have trouble
overcoming tire terminators, such as potholes and nails. Similarly, in order to
land a job, contractors may exaggerate their ability to perform, and this can
come back to haunt them. Remember: If you tell someone you can do a job in 7
days, and it takes you 10, you’re a bum in their eyes. But if you tell them the
job will take 2 weeks and you finish in 10 days, you’re a hero. Same
performance, different perceptions.
No matter how hard you try to avoid them, misunderstandings inevitably will
arise. When it reaches this stage, the key is to make the customer feel like a
winner.
It’s in your interest – as well as the customer’s to do so – because the same
studies that show disgruntled customers will blab about you to everyone they
know also show that customers who get their complaints handled satisfactorily
often become the most loyal customers and best sales reps for that company. One
reason for that is they usually end up getting to know one or more people in
the company who get involved in resolving the problem. If those people are
polite and helpful, it resounds to the benefit of the company. They establish
personal bonds with the customer that go deeper than if there were no problems
to bring them together so many times.
So strong is this effect that I, along with many other business consultants,
recommend appointing one person in particular as the point person to handle
calls from disgruntled customers. That person ought to be none other than the
owner or CEO of the company.
Granted, this is not very practical if you run an extremely large company,
although even then it’s a good idea for the CEO to manage disputes with very
important customers. But most companies in your industry are of the size that
handling customer complaints ought to be a key component of the CEO’s job
description.
Too busy? Ask yourself if anything you do is more important than dealing with
disgruntled customers, considering that …
- future business and referrals are at stake, not only the
job at hand;
- each customer who goes away unhappy is likely to badmouth you to 15
other acquaintances;
- on the other hand, customers will be impressed when they see the
highest ranking person in the company paying attention to their complaint; and,
who is in a better position to cut through company bureaucracy to resolve the
problem?
- finally, talking with dissatisfied customers is a great way to
monitor the performance of your people and identify shortcomings.
