I need to get a television and speakers installed, so I bought an installation package from Geek Squad, who partners with Best Buy to offer their services. (I say that my time is too valuable to spend all day installing electronics because that sounds better than just admitting that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing). My email confirmation said to call a local Best Buy to schedule the installation. Even though I had my confirmation numbers and all the info they needed, after 30 minutes on the phone and being placed on hold more than five times, I was still waiting to get a day and time scheduled. And when the rep finally came back on the line, the first appointment they had available was more than three weeks from now.
It was a recipe for customer service dissatisfaction until I noticed that Chris, the manager of the local Best Buy store I'd called, had his email address prominently posted on the web page. I emailed him and got a reply back in five minutes.
Chris swooped in and took ownership of the problem. Rather than explain that I was speaking with a central call center and not with someone in his store, he apologized and acknowledged how frustrated I was. He said he would speak with someone in his store to see if they could schedule something sooner with me. He promised to get back in touch with me today rather than asking me to contact him later. And he said he would speak with the call center to find out how to prevent this from happening in the future. He turned a frustrating experience into a positive one.
It only takes one smart, well-trained, caring person to make an unhappy customer feel much better. Don’t make excuses. Don’t tell the customer that she’s wrong. Don’t abdicate responsibility or make the customer do more work to get the problem solved. Just listen. Acknowledge and apologize for the problem. Then get involved personally to turn the situation around.
Whether you’re a counselor, a small business owner, or anyone else who occasionally comes across a customer who feels let down, the first step to turning the situation around is to care enough to get involved in the first place.
Here’s a past post on how to handle customer complaints (Chris did all of these things), and an excellent Seth Godin post on how to better handle inbound calls.