While
most customers are willing to tolerate reasonable levels of inefficiencies and
errors, the old adage comes into play, “To err is human but if the eraser wears
out ahead of the pencil, you are overdoing it”!
Mahatma
Gandhi, in a speech in South Africa in 1890 is believed to have said:
"A
customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on
us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the
purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are
not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the
opportunity to do so."
Your
customer is your lifeline. Your reason to exist. Who will buy your product and
thus provide sustenance to you and your employees. Yet, so many startups take
their customer for granted as they build their young company. Their focus is on
technology, on human resources, on making the workplace exciting so that people
stay and sometimes on managing cash!
Upset
customers have little patience. Annoyances that a person usually tolerates
become intolerable when that individual is upset. You cannot control another
person's behaviour. But you can change your behaviour to avoid causing
annoyance.
Some
of the common reasons that I have seen and experienced which make customers
angry and therefore complain or reject your brand are as follows:
Commitments
not met
The
very common refrain of most customers is that commitments are made by staff
members at the time of placing the order and then forgotten. Whether these are
in the form of a commitment to deliver a product at a certain time or it is to
provide a service at a certain level or it is for the visit of a plumber to
your home, a commitment once made must be kept. Most customers are also willing
to accept a change in commitment if a communication has been made to them and,
more importantly, the customer has agreed to this change.
If
a commitment is kept you have a happy customer. If the commitment is not kept
you have a very unhappy and dissatisfied customer. If at this time your staff
attempts to give a “smart” answer or offer an insincere apology then the customer
is in his right to get really angry and upset.
Any
store member, in an attempt to save his own skin, must never pass the buck to
his head office or factory since this weakens the perceptions of the brand in
front of the customer. Internal issues of a company must be addressed
internally and not in front of any customer.
As
our retail chain grew, there were several staff members who did not recognize
me when I walked into one of our stores. The best way to understand your own
staff is to call your company help line and understand what a customer has to
go through each time he has a complaint.
Poor
Service
Most
of us have experienced poor service levels often in various stores. An
indifferent store staff can irritate any customer.
Shoe
sales men would have definitely tried to entice you to buy a “slightly tight”
shoe with a response “When you start using the shoe it will open up” and fit
your foot much better”. How often have we purchased a tight shirt or coat
because the sales staff member did not have a larger size and encouraged us to
buy it because “you are sure to lose some weight”!
Arrogance
and Sarcasm
If
a staff member is arrogant the customer picks up such body language very
quickly. Staff members who face your customers are your ambassadors and must
have humility. Customers need to be heard and do not like to repeat themselves.
If a staff member does not know the customer then being overfriendly or passing
a funny comment can also be misunderstood.
Sarcastic
remarks only heighten anger, they seldom ease tension. There is no place for
one’s ego in front of your customer.
Questioning
a Customer’s Intelligence
I
am sure a lot of us would have experienced a situation where we go to a
restaurant and ask for a glass of cold water. When the water arrives and we
don’t find this cold, we tell the waiter to change the water. How often have we
seen the waiter touch the glass from the outside to show the customer that in
his view the water is cold enough? The same applies when you ask for a cup of
hot tea and on complaining the staff member touches the cup to check if you are
right!
These
are classic examples of a staff member questioning a customer’s intelligence
and conveying distrust. Anyone in the retail business has to accept a
customer’s viewpoint as long as the customer is fair and reasonable.
Arguing
with a Customer
Arguing
with your customer is a cardinal sin for every business. Arguing with a
customer may enable a store staff member to win a small battle but in the long
run, he would not only have lost the sale but the customer forever.
My
advice to most customer facing staff members is that every morning when they
leave for work, they should “remove their watch” and leave it on their bedside
table and they should “take off their cloak of ego” and hang it behind their
bathroom door. There is no place for time or ego when it comes to handling your
customer.
People
get upset for a variety of reasons, many of which are under your or your
organization's control to prevent. The easiest way to calm upset customers is
to not make them angry in the first place. At the same time, it is very
important to understand that a customer is not always right. If the customer is
unreasonable, then a firm but very polite tone is needed to handle such irate
customers.
*******************
The author is the founder Chairman of
Guardian Pharmacies and the author of 5 best-selling books, Reboot. Reinvent.
Rewire: Managing Retirement in the 21st Century; The Corner Office; An Eye for
an Eye; The Buck Stops Here - Learnings of a #Startup Entrepreneur and The Buck
Stops Here – My Journey from a Manager to an Entrepreneur.
Twitter: @gargashutosh
Instagram: ashutoshgarg56
Blog: ashutoshgargin.wordpress.com |
ashutoshgarg56.blogspot.com
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