Customer service is one of those things that can either make you feel warm and fuzzy or just fill you with anger, and that all depends on the customer or client. I’ve had my fair share of difficult customers and clients, having worked in the past with an e-commerce business, a retail shop and currently dealing with technical queries from website users and customers in my role as webmaster for another website and in my day job as an accountant in a local firm.
Last week I had to respond to a very sarcastic email from someone who wasn’t even a paying customer yet. We had just given the entire website a complete overhaul, new branding, new menu system, the works. One thing that unfortunately slipped through the net was updating the link to a free special report in the email that gets sent out to people after they sign up for it. I think it went unnoticed for a couple of days, and I know that there were a few other signups during that time.
Due to the sarcastic and unpleasant nature of the email informing me of this mistake, I was seriously tempted to reply with an equally sarcastic email (obviously while still including that the mistake was now rectified and she could go ahead and download the free report). There were two reasons why I didn’t;
1. It may have taken a long time for someone to have notified me of this problem had she not taken the time to let me know. After all, if you had just found an interesting website and signed up for a free report that you couldn’t then get access to, you’d probably just give up and carry on surfing. Half of those people might have turned out to be customers or clients some time in the future.
2. I knew it was unlikely that I would get a response to the sort of retort I had in mind, and all it would do is make her from a possible future customer to a definitely not future customer. It wasn’t worth the temporary satisfaction I would derive from it (I’m not a horrible person; I like to help people wherever I can – it just annoys me when people think they can talk to others in that manner).
So I sent a nice polite email telling her the situation and included the correct link where she could download the free report.
At the end of the day, treat the customer or client the way you would like to be treated, even if they treat you badly. Obviously it is always easier to go the extra mile for the nice customers, but don’t neglect the bad ones. They are, after all, still customers.
The post Good Customers, Bad Customers appeared first on Elyse Burns-Hill.