Managing unhappy or angry customers is one scenario that every entrepreneur will definitely experience in their career. Chances are high that you might be met with aggressive behavior, frustration or distress from the customer. Scroll down for some best practices to be followed to satisfy an unhappy customer.
Maintaining Composure
Remaining calm and composed, irrespective of the tirade from the other end can help you make the situation better with hardly any hostility being cooked up. The customer has nothing personal towards us; rather he/she is unhappy with our product or the service which we provide. Entrepreneurship is for the people who have thick skin and remain unfazed by the verbal volleys thrown at them. Yelling back at them can only make things worse, so it is better to build on our emotional quotient keeping our feelings aside. One way of achieving a better emotional quotient is by maintaining physical and mental fitness.
Listen! Not Just hear!!
Don’t just lend your ear for the sake of it, when the customer is complaining under distress. It is a good practice to listen keenly to what the customer is up to. It can be difficult to understand the issue when the customer is highly frustrated and might not be precise with his/her problem. So after he/she vents out, it is better to summarise the pain points to the customer and check once whether we missed out on anything. This exercise comforts the customers as it gives them a sense of relief that we have acknowledged their problems.
Attitude Matters
Any unhappy customer expects a sense of empathy and a solution to their problem. The words we utter and body language play a big role in comforting dissatisfied customers. Sympathizing and being politely sorry about the experience they had can help to build a good rapport. It is better to avoid giving sarcastic responses to their issues, as it can make them malevolent. Fake politeness can also draw the ire of customers. Having a pleasant disposition can make it easier for the customer to communicate with us
The Solution
Having understood, what the issue is all about, it is important to address it at the earliest. Any brand or venture’s value is decided on how quickly they are able to provide solutions at the time of distress. A good business always has some extemporary solutions, whenever a problem arises. Customer feedback on our action for the problem can help us to render our services in a better way. Hence, we should make sure we are in constant touch with the customer until the issue is addressed completely.
Learn From Your Mistakes
An angry customer can be a blessing in disguise; he/she helps you to unearth a potential show stopper in your business model. This is where many entrepreneurs fail to learn. They treat these distress calls as just a small glitch and get it fixed with not much introspection into it. It is important that we retrospect such unhappy experiences from the customers and work on possible ways to prevent it from recurring again. Nothing can teach us more than situations like these and we need to give the due respect it demands.