We have had a few office discussions recently about customer service disappointments, you know those times when the service that you receive was not what you expected to receive. It really got me thinking, that it is very true, that most complaints stem from not the way that the sale or transaction was performed, not from the actual shopping experience, but most complaints come from how a mistake is either ignored or corrected, or how a bad outcome was handled.
We are human, mistakes happen, we all expect something to go wrong at some time. You know the drill, the item won't scan at the checkout, a price check is called, the checkout operator has no idea how much the item is, they ask you, but I have no idea either, even though I would have looked at the price when choosing that item, I never buy anything without checking the price. For the time it takes to get the price, in labour costs it would have been cheaper for the supermarket to just give you the item! My time is valuable, the checkout operator's time is valuable, no one wants queues, or to wait in a queue, but they happen. How long would you wait before complaining? What is an acceptable time to wait? It all depends on what you are doing next, what you were doing, how many things you are buying. If I think back, I get the most impatient when I am only buying two or three things, don't mind waiting when I have a trolley full!
A recent situation highlight what drives people to make a complaint about the service they received. As we discussed the experience, each step from the outside, seemed reasonable, not great, but not too bad. What tipped the situation was the manner in which they were spoken to. Not what was said, but how the staff member addressed the customer. It is then that all the individual experiences get put together to make the whole experience not good enough and worthy of a quick email to customer service to get dealt with.
I must say in this situation, it was handled brilliantly and proved that with the right PR procedures in place, a "I WILL NEVER EVER GO TO THAT PLACE AGAIN" was quickly turned into a "They listened to my problem, apologised and I will see how they have improved next time"
I know that in my previous career, some of my most loyal customers were those that were at one stage my biggest customer complaints. If you fix it right, you will win them forever.
Keep looking after those customers!
Geoff
