Business Strategy Plan: Satisfying The Unsatisfied Client

What a pleasant surprise to see someone address customer service as an actual business strategy plan.

Susan Wilson Solovic from All Business wrote a post about using customer complaints as an opportunity to win the customer over, for life.

The article pointed out that customers who have never had a problem with a company are much less loyal than a customer who had a problem with a company but had it satisfactorily resolved.  That statement speaks volumes.

It takes time and energy to make a complaint.  If you don’t care enough to make a complaint (when needed), you probably don’t care if you return to that business or not.   Same goes for your clients.

Solovic gave three tips for taking complaints in stride:

1.    Don’t take it personally - when a customer sounds off, unless you went out of your way to offend them personally, the complaint is not directed at you, so don’t take it to heart.

2.    Listen carefully and with empathy - when someone takes the time to share with you how the service or product was unsatisfactory, they just want some understanding (and maybe an apology).

3.    Thank the customer - because your customers will go out of their way to give you praise and sometimes criticism, thank them, because that takes time and guts.  They have gone out of their way to share their thoughts and feelings, so be gracious with your thanks.

It’s never easy to sit and listen to someone complain about your brain child or the services/products you’ve crafted, but consider it a free consultation.  Getting real feedback with no incentive is valuable and you can hopefully salvage that customer relationship and go forward doing better because now you know better.