Six Secrets for Turning a Mistake with a Customer into a Golden Opportunity
Let’s face it – no matter how much we plan for success and train our teams how to serve our customers with excellence, sometimes things are just going to go wrong. Great leaders actually plan for things to go wrong. Sound crazy? When things go wrong it can actually be a chance to capture a customer’s loyalty for good … if handled correctly.
Don’t miss these golden
opportunities!
- Acknowledge & Expect Challenges
Even if you have developed a stellar team that values the customer & always keeps them top of mind, people make mistakes or imperfect decisions when faced with a challenge. Let your team know that you understand this and that you need them to be transparent about it when it happens, so that you can leverage all available & reasonable resources to repair the problem. Time is often not on your side in these cases and reacting quickly can provide you with more options than if you wait. It also shows the customer that you are giving the situation priority & attention, so they can relax and trust that your team is on top of it and looking for solutions. Make sure employees you are having challenges with are not in a position to bottle-neck your ability to respond in an effort to avoid another “black mark”.
- Immediately Apologize to the Customer!
One of the most powerful and under utilized phrases is “I’m sorry”. If you’ve messed up – or even if you haven’t but the customer thinks you did, teach your team
to immediately respond to a concerned or upset customer with, “I’m so sorry – let’s figure this out!” The customer is likely anticipating a fight – so let them “win” right off the bat & change the tone to one of cooperation. Customers just want to know you’re interested in helping make it right if you need to. Going on the defense, acting neutral or reciting “policy” creates an us versus them tone. You can sort out who really screwed up later, but meanwhile the tone will be more collaborative, you will both be working together looking into what makes sense.
- Keep the Big Picture in Mind
It’s so easy to get focused on the wrong things when a customer is pointing the finger. Warn your team about these two common pitfalls:
– Winning the battle & losing the war is an easy trap to fall into. You don’t have to capitulate to everything a customer demands – but when developing a solution it makes sense to take into account the entire relationship, their history with you, how large a footprint this perceived problem will make in their organization, and the probability that the real story will be understood as it spreads.
– Focusing on “my job” and losing sight of what makes sense for the customer and your relationship, is a common and usually unintended trap your team can fall into. If a problem is blocking them from completing one of their responsibilities the natural tendency may be to focus on the completion of task because that is their “job”. Reinforce that their ultimate job is to do what is right for the customer as well as making sense to your organization.
Instead work with your team to:
– React how they would want someone to if they were in the same situation and they believed they were right.
– Talk about & emphasize what makes sense.
– Remember: refunds & guarantees may be necessary and fair – a good start – but they don’t fix relationships, people do.
- Develop a formal action plan
Account for problem situations with customers and develop a procedure for moving these situations out of the normal process, and funneling them into one that provides for manual handling, human contact, and quick approval for solutions that are developed. Remember that acting swiftly usually provides you with more options for fixing what is wrong.
- Provide Tools
Most people really care, want to connect with the customer & do the right thing. But they don’t always naturally know how to communicate effectively. It’s just not their expertise or strength. You can help them by providing a way to learn these skills.
Learning what to say, and how to talk to an upset or unhappy customer is crucial. Providing your team with tools can be as simple as teaching them how & when to use powerful language & caring phrases to elicit information from a customer, like “Can you help me understand ..?” Remind them that if the customer is unable to tell them what they do want, your employee can take the information about what is wrong & that they don’t want, and consider options for simply doing the opposite.
- Prepare & Practice
For a lot of people it’s a long way from their brain to their mouth. Knowing something in your head, is different than actually articulating it and expressing it out of your mouth – especially if their dealing with an upset customer. The best way for your team to become good at it is to practice what to say and how to say. It’s also important to remind them that even though it may feel like it’s personal when a customer is expressing themselves angrily, it’s really not. Teach them to take the emotion out of it, or pretend that the customer is not angry, but rather sad & asking them for help.
Where’s the golden opportunity in all of this? Sadly, doing the right thing isn’t common enough in today’s world and many organizations focus on minimizing their monetary losses rather than doing the right thing. Can you think of a time when a company you were doing business with messed something up badly, but then willingly did what it took to make it right? What kind of feeling did you have about that organization at the end of the day? How loyal are you to them now? How many people did you tell the story to? Can you think of a better way to distinguish your business and differentiate from the competition?