Can you fix it?

I call it "remedial custoemr service." And you should avoid having to practice it if you can.

Once your customer has an unhappy experience, can you fix it? What should you do? You want happy customers, of course. The bad experience may not be anyone's fault. You should definitely try to fix that.

By Mr. Matté (if there is an issue with this image, contact me
using this image's Commons talk page or my English Wikipedia talk
page; I'll know about it a lot faster)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

As I said, the poor quality of the experience could be simply due to unmet expectations. Your customer wanted more, or different, than your company could provide.

This falls under the nobody's fault rubric. It's there with a situation created because the customer was in a bad mood or having a bad day. (The chronically hard-to-please is another story all together and likely irremediable.)

This is a case where you'll want to soothe and smooth out the occurrence. Here are a couple of ways to do that:

One possibility is to offer to have the coveted item in stock and on hold for this customer the next time. Extend the courtesy of a call when you have it. Make it available at a small discount to accommodate the trouble of a second trip. If the customer was looking for a service your company could not offer, help him/her find someone who can assist them.

Let's say, however, that this was not a blameless poor experience, but that one of your staff was unhelpful.  This lead to a dissatisfied patron.

Can you fix this?

If the customer complains, you are obligated to try to make things better for him and for you. Have someone else help out, or work with him/her yourself. Offer to serve this client whenever s/he comes in. The extra attention should make up for he slip in service experienced.

Then be sure to train your staff to be friendly, courteous and solicitous of yor customers!

The above were just two examples of No Fault and At Fault calls for "remedial customer service." Let me tell you this real life story in which the fix failed, and why.

A couple of times a year, I treat myself to a tourist's breakfast in New York's theater district. It's expensive and enough of a meal to keep me going all day. The service is genuinely good, the eggs hot, the coffee plentiful, and it comes with a generous pour of grapefruit juice. The sausage, however, is a patty. which is usually fine. On one occasion, I decided to mix it up. The bacon turned out to be greasy and tough to chew. To add to that disappointment, they were also out of grapefruite juice.

I mentoned my letdown to the manager who took my credit card. He did the right thing-- apologized, gave me his card. "Ask for next time you come in, please."

On my next visit, I waited fifteen minutes at the table. When I left the restaurant after twenty minutes had passed, the manager was still chatting (and flirting) with a waitress at the back bar.

I should probably send the manager a note of gratitude. I had a very pleasant and much less expensive meal on the other side of the street. I am unlikely to ever return to the restaurant.

A lot of your customers, however, do come back regardless of their experience. Many of your customers won't complain when they are unhappy. Some of them won't come back. Others will if it's convenient for them. You won't have their trust or loyalty.

An Expo for Small Businesses #MKTNY

Photo by Kerem Baran, Co-founder of Boomset

If you're in business, what you don't know about selling, marketing, advertising and social media could probably fill less than a 1/4 tsp. (See What I Learned At The Fair on this blog.)

Nonetheless, it never hurts to be reminded of the fundamentals of these skills. #MKTNY on May 29th at the Metropolitan Pavillion offered a slew of excellent reminders.

There were breakout sessions galore at Market Expo New York during the 10 to 5 time span. Especially fascinating and informative were the LNKD and G+ primers, which gave pointers even a seasoned user like myself needs. The Facebook sponsored Social Media Theater, where these short sessions took place, was a theater in name and seating arrangements only. It lacked a wall, or even a curtain to keep out the din of the exhibit floor. Sponsors and exhibitors were crammed into the inadequately small exhibit area, making circulation on the floor an intimate experience of bumping into fellow attendees.

Good luck to those attendees who arrived in time promptly at 10 in the hope of catching the 10:30 breakouts! The sign-in process, like the size of the Pavillion conference spaces, was inadequate, despite the best efforts of a friendly staff. Each ticket was scanned to create the nametag and the long line meant that even with extra hands manning Ipads and laptops to help move it along, very few of us were in the hall by 10:30.

Spoiled as many of us are by the expansive spaces of hotel conference set-ups or the Javits Center, #MKTNY proved disappointing. Not having enough room to fully circulate among the tables probably short-changed the exhibitors as well.

One last nit to pick-- the floor plan in the glossy program guide did not match the actual layout of the Metropolitan Pavillion. Nevermind, the hall was small enough so you didn't really need a map to find your way around.

On the plus side, there were plenty of experts to offer a hand to the resource-strapped small business owner.
SEO consultants, like #MaishaWalker, #JoeApfelbaum and #JenniferSchulman were there to share tips. Sales trainers, Time Warner for Business, SCORE, and even a photographer were also available.

Small space, small business, big schedule and an on-site registration fee of relatively small change at $50 meant that New York Market Expo was a good deal.

This was the first year for this event, and likely next time it will be better organized.

What I Learned At The Fair

The St Louis World's Fair introduced the world to the tea bag, and iced tea, popularized the waffle cone, showed the first full cast of a blue whale, and, after it closed,  sent its exhibits to museums all over the country.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons  (in the public domain)

Most of the expos you'll visit these days will not offer the innovations and variety found at the 1904 event, originally put together to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase (1803)and officially titled the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

The Market New York Expo at the Metropolitan Pavillion on West 18th Street, New York, NY was bound to be a less formidable affair. 

And, of course, it was. (See the commentary, on this site, here.)
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Using databases to help you serve your customer better

By Arbeck (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Knowing your buyers is one step towards cementing a great relationship.

The more you know about the people who like your products or services, the better you can serve them.

There may be things they want that you could offer but never thought to. Ask. Use the survey as another route to giving a great customer experience.


For more, see the FM articile on Data Mining by Tamara Beck:
http://connect.forwardmetrics.com/customer-service/mining-your-data-its-a-customer-service-thing.html

How do you handle difficult customers?

Dealing with customers is not always easy. There are those who are hard to please, and those who make life difficult for anyone they encounter. Or at least, that is your perspective.

When they are impossible, we've suggested that you just let them go. Refer them on or tell them you can't help them.

If you have another member of the sales team who might get along better with a tough customer, by all means, share him/her with your colleague.

If the relationship is not so compromised as to still be salvageable, and you want to keep working with Difficult X, what do you do?

For more on dealing with hard to please customers, see http://connect.forwardmetrics.com/business-management/what-have-you-done-for-me-lately.html.

How do you deal with difficult customers?

The customer is always right

We all know that the customer is always right. And with that adage, it's only natural there should also be some resentment. We are admonished not to bite the hand that feeds us, even if sometimes we really really want to...

Central Park ducks are challenged to share their lake with
tourists in boats.  Photo by Tamara Beck

Those who dwell in tourist towns typically resent the the hoards who come to enjoy the beauties of their nabe, and disturb their peaceable lives. The fact that tourism puts money in their pockets makes the resentment deepen. No one likes to be beholden.

 As a business owner, you are beholden to the customer, dependent on their good will. Without them, your business would fail. You don't have to like it and you are free to vent. "Mrs. So and So is very demanding," you can tell your spouse, your therapist, or your priest if you are so inclined. Mrs. So and So must never know how you feel.

The customer is always right.

There are probably a hundred ways to lose business....

As a businessman or woman, you don't want to be singing the refrain as modified from "Wonderful Town," listing the many ways a business can go south.

Our focus of course is on the customer service side of keeping your business pointing true north.

Any interaction between your customers or prospects and the people you hire to meet and greet them requires good customer service. Customer service implies a good interaction. It is expected that customers and prospects will be treated well. 

This also applies to the folks you hire to man your booths at expos, like the #NYXPO which I attended last week. People walk around the floor of the Javits Center looking at exhibits and asking for information. They are not all customers or even necessarily good prospects, but you never know....

At the #NYXPO the coolest exhibit bar none was an old pick up truck with plastic letters displayed in its bed for a sign company. Only drawback for the company in question? The two guys repping them on the floor were so engrossed in their cell phones they couldn't bother to talk to passers by. I went by the truck twice with the intention of getting a little information. On both passes, I was roundly ignored.

So, here's one way to lose....