Doing right by Customer Concerns
~ This was posted on - January 10, 2011
When customers complain, the worst businesses will get upset; but the best businesses will seize the opportunity to FIX it, and improve the customer’s experience. It is, for most of us, easier to keep a customer than find a new one. In the last few days, I’ve been on both ends.
A customer called to ask for an additional music on hold production, believing they had one more remaining in their subscription package. The Holiday messaging on hold production, she believed, wasn’t one that counted. I apologized that Hold Time hadn’t communicated that clearly at some point, and that we very much appreciate her as a client. Once we understood each other, I offered to do the additional production without charge. She happily agreed. “You may want to consider increasing the number of productions Hold Time does for you next year,” I said helpfully.
It’s a lesson I picked up from my father-in-law at NC Machinery, who used to manage a large commercial garage. He said, “Patrick, Be gracious with complaints, and resolve them if you can without charge… the first time. Your customers will be loyal, and understand that additional work costs money the next time around.”
And, if you’ve actually made a mistake, don’t run from it. Say, “Thank you for letting me know, and I’ll fix it right now.”
An audio-visual company in Seattle I use for equipment sent me an online survey about improvements to their website. I can get the equipment just about anywhere, but I like them, so I did the survey. Groan… it was inefficient and redundant - Survey Hell. 30 minutes later I finished.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to use us in the future?”
Pretty low, at that point. The survey itself was hurting more than it was helping their marketing, so I called and complained. They were very sorry. Good job.
But 30 minutes later, the Owner called me. He also apologized, and said his next call was to the 3rd party research company they’d hired to conduct the survey. Now THAT’s how you handle a complaint! Excellent!
At Hold Time Studios, we’re very good at on-hold messaging, but nobody’s perfect. Glitches do happen, and information is sometimes misplaced. But the size of our company is such that if I don’t already what’s going on – I CAN get to the problem like Zeus’s Thunderbolt.