Let’s talk about customer frustrations and how not to respond to a customer’s question when you’re being asked to help solve a problem.
There are any number of things you can do to help people continue thinking great things about your brand.
Sadly, directing someone to an online help chat or to an 800 telephone number don’t cut it.
When a frustrated client or customer comes to you for help, don’t fob them off with a lame excuse.
Find out what they need and if you don’t know the answer, find it and get back to them.
You can thank me for this later.
Here’s why:
Take a recent run in I heard about from a customer who had less than a helpful experience with an account manager in a division of a major technology company.
This wasn’t a random request to just anyone.
This was a technical question for the account manager for a company that provides printing technology for a small business that employs 200 people.
The annual contract is worth at least $60,000 of what is guaranteed, repeat business.
The customer had a specific question about printing a certain kind of envelope.
The customer couldn’t find an answer on the company website and after an hour of frustration trying to solve the problem on their own, the customer reached out to the account manager for help.
Although this wasn’t quite where the wheels began to fall off, at this point they were certainly beginning to wobble. I’ll get to why in a moment.
The account manager referred the client asking for help to the company support line via an 800 phone number.
The customer couldn’t get an answer from the helpline so he asked the account manager to clarify a point that the customer had had to hunt down on the company website.
At this point all the customer needed was a simple yes or no answer.
Remember, the follow up question was to confirm a point of information, nothing more.
Which is where the account manager dropped the ball a second time by referring the client back to the customer support line.
Although the account manager didn’t technically do anything wrong, where he slipped up and where he left a bad taste in the mouth of his client in terms of that person’s experience of the brand was that he could easily have responded by telling the client he would find out the answer and get back to the client with an answer.
That’s where the wheels began wobbling and where the brand got dinged in the mind of the client.
The lesson here is that something like this shouldn’t happen.
It’s account management’s job to keep things sweet and to make sure clients experience positive brand interactions.
Is the client or customer always right?
No, they’re not.
Sometimes they’re simply wrong, or stupid, or lazy, or careless, or they expect too much.
Sometimes though, sometimes it’s the account manager’s job to read between the lines and to go just that little bit above and beyond, both to help out, and to help the client or customer have the best possible experience of the brand and of the service. Especially when the client is paying $60,000 a year.
As always, thanks for reading.
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P.S. Next time on Shaking the Tree … Why you need to set up content pillars.