A customer purchased one of our college downloadable videos (“How to Write Great College Essays”) from our online store recently and was unable to log in to her account to watch it. That’s only happened one time before in the past year, and it took me and our tech support guy most of the day to figure out how to get her back in the system.
While we were diagnosing the problem, we had to ask her to work with us and keep trying her username and password. This went on for several hours. But she never once vented any frustration, never yelled at me over email, and never said, “Forget it—this hassle isn’t worth the $12.99,” all of which she had reason to do. She was just patient and polite until we solved the problem.
Sure, I would have worked just as hard to fix it even if she hadn’t been so nice. But her behavior got me thinking about just how much a customer can do to get good customer support from a small business. Even when you’re frustrated, remember that there is a human on the other end. It doesn’t matter if that person is down the street or at a call center in India, they’re still human. Don’t yell, insult, threaten or otherwise scar on the first cut. Human nature dictates that the better you treat them, the better they’re likely to treat you.
Customers can do a lot to get great customer support. For counselors and small businesses, here’s a past post on how to give it.