You’ll have the misfortune of having some bat-sh*t crazy customers.
You’ll know them when you run into them. They’re never satisfied, no matter what you do. They always want more, no matter what they get. And, they usually send you crazy emails where they tell you how awful you are for some insignificant reason like wrapping the necklace in light pink tissue paper instead of magenta.
Those customers aside, most are like you and me. They want to be appreciated and they want to get what they pay for.
They’re delighted when you go above and beyond and they love telling their friends all about you and your business.
Those are the customers you need to keep in mind when you run across any type of customer service issue. How would you treat a loyal customer who loves your products?
In today’s video, I’m going to share three different customer service experiences I had recently.
Two were pretty bad and the other was amazing. I hope they inspire you to make thoughtful decisions when dealing with your customers.
Have you ever had a poor customer service experience that made you say, “If this ever happens in my business, I’m going to do the exact opposite. I would never treat a customer that way!” Or, has a small business blown you away with awesome customer service?
Share in the comments below, but PLEASE do NOT name any names. Everybody experiences bad days and makes mistakes–and there are always two sides to every story, so let’s share without giving away identifying details. Thank you!
There is nothing that can substitute for excellent customer service. Like you said, you can have the most incredible product out there, but if your customer service is terrible, chances are you are not going to have repeat customers.
I have been pretty fortunate with customer service, no horror stories, but one that does stick out in my mind is a present from a big box store. I wanted to return it, and the only way to do so was to ship it back, which I had to do out of pocket. I can understand a small business not being able to afford the shipping for a return, but I thought it was unfortunate that I had to pay to return a present. I also had a great customer service experience on Etsy, where the seller got an item to me very quickly because I did not have enough insight to plan it out ahead of time 🙂 She was great to work with, and I would definitely recommend her shop to others as a result.
I have messed up and switched package labels before, sending the incorrect orders to two different customers. As soon as I heard from one customer that she received a different order than she had placed, I contacted the buyer that I believed I had swapped orders with. I handled it similarly to your final experience – – I offered to let both customers keep the incorrect orders and created, then sent out at no cost, the correct orders.
Did it sting to be out the money/materials/time? Of course. But the mistake was mine and so the responsibility to correct the mistake was also mine.
As a seller, it is super important to step back and put yourself in the buyer’s position. Through no fault of their own, they received the incorrect product. Isn’t it fair that they would expect to be sent what they ordered. It’s also awesome when a buyer is able to put herself in a seller’s shoes and recognize that humans make mistakes and be patient with the seller as she corrects it.
I’ve had two memorably poor customer service experiences. The first, on Etsy, was non-delivery of my order. The seller strung me on for weeks about every possible life circumstance that could get in the way of sending my package (illness, car trouble, etc). After a couple months of excuses, her shop vanished.
The second experience was with a large supply company. They sent me the wrong style of setting. When I contacted them, they said I could receive the correct supplies if I sent back the first set with insurance on the package. They did not offer to cover any of the postal costs even though there was no error on my part.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Hope you have a fantastic week!
I have had great luck on websites but I have had horrible customer service from large companies such as the phone company & cable company. I used to work in customer service and I know how listening to people complain about things that are not your fault can get tiring – but it is your JOB. Now, when ever I get a representative who I feel isn’t listening to me or can’t help me I don’t even bother to try to rectify the situation with them – I ask for a supervisor immediately. Now I realize your experience was different due to the fact that most sellers at Esty, eBay, etc. are the owners, but regardless, don’t take it out on me if there is a computer error, billing issue, etc.
I sell on another website, nothing professional but typically my old and/or left over items. I had a customer write to me about an item that didn’t work – now I had put in the listing that the item was old and potentially may not work but I didn’t want to open the item to check – this was spelled out to her. Even so I gave her a partial refund. She seemed thrilled and I was happy because she was happy – the feedback she left for me was positive, but lacked any detail. I look at that situation as a positive because I know I did the right thing, even though she was really in the wrong. And I have to deal with things so *I* can be OK with my practices 🙂
I’ve been in the frustrating situation of selling for retail companies at the department store level. I sold fine jewelry, so these were mostly purchases that people had really invested in. It was so irritating to have to follow ridiculous customer service practices that assumed customers were dishonest and attempted to push the cost of repairing badly made products onto customers to get every dime we could out of them.
I learned very well all the ways I never want to treat customers and now that I’m starting a business I’m keeping these things in mind. Thanks so much for the reminder of just how important good customer service is from the customer side.
Customer service should be a priority for all companies, you want success? Work from the ground up! Customer Service is grass root foundations.
This is so timely for me! Our cottage is close to a small town with lovely little shops. A few weeks ago I was browsing in a higher end ladies shop and spotted a top I really liked so I made a point of returning during our vacation to see if there were any left. There was – yay! – so I tried it on intending to buy. I noticed a manufacturing defect (a visibly badly crooked hem) and pointed it out to the sales person. She pinned it up a bit and assured me it was nothing a good seamstress couldn’t fix. True, but this item was still full price. I expected her to either (a) offer to have their seamstress fix it or (b) discount the item to make it more palatable for me to bear the cost of repair. I really liked this top so either option would have worked for me. Nope. Nothing. Just kept saying it was a simple fix. So, she lost a sale and possibly an ongoing customer. To make it even a better experience, their website does not have any contact information under “Contact Us” so I could direct my feedback to the owner! Thankfully, this is not the norm for this small town – thanks for letting me vent 🙂
I had an experience similar to your first on Etsy. I got the wrong product. Not just slightly wrong like a colour but a completely different product. The email I got back was short and blunt. It didn’t include the word Sorry – seriously? It didn’t occur to you to even say sorry? She didn’t say anything about keeping or returning the product that was wrong. And she promised to send the correct product but it never arrived. Ever. As an Aussie, it takes about 2.5 weeks for stuff to arrive. So it was about 6 weeks before I figured out the thing I ordered was never gonna come. It was my 3rd purchase from them. Never again. So they definitely lost a repeat buyer. I often think if they’ve done that to me, how many others have they treated like that? And they are probably the people complaining their business isn’t doing well or isn’t growing. Gee, I wonder why? Or worse, they are teaching somewhere about how to have an Etsy business. Eek, no!
I have a plan in place with each order to reduce the risk of sending the wrong thing. And I also have a plan if it happens which is you keep the wrong one, I send the right one and there is a very apologetic email involved too. Really, is it that hard? You wouldn’t have thought so, but obviously it just doesn’t click for some businesses. And the advantage of being a small seller is we don’t have company policies to adhere to, so we should be even better at this stuff. I think it is an subconscious way of showing how much you respect your business and your customers.
I get all my business from referrals so customer service is super important for me. I want to make sure all my clients are happy and have a good experience when working with me. I always try to remember that bad experiences are usually talked about more than good ones. I know when I order a handmade product I’m always thrilled when the seller has put extra thought into making the packaging cute. (The business books I won from April were packaged with cute hearts, string and a handmade label! I loved it!) I have had great experiences with sellers on Etsy. I think more small businesses are realizing the importance of getting repeat customers.
I think the most abysmal customer service I’ve ever experienced was with a particular phone company. When my husband & I got married, he upgraded his package, because I talk a lot more than he does. 😀
When we got our next bill, we were sickened to discover that it was several hundred dollars. Why? Because they never actually upgraded it. So we called, and they noticed that we’d tried to upgrade the package at that time…they couldn’t even figure out why it didn’t go through. So they told us not to worry, hang in there, they’d correct it, and we’d have a corrected bill on the next billing cycle.
Next bill…it’s even higher now…they still hadn’t corrected it! My husband got up early (he was military at that time, and working a crazy shift), just so that he could call them & get it straightened out. The lady told him that “he should have called back to check & make sure they were doing their job.” He handed me the phone at that point (I’m usually more diplomatic than him), and I crisply informed her that my husband was serving our country, and his job description did not include checking to make sure she was doing HER job. When her response was to tell me that I had an attitude problem, I informed her VERY SWEETLY that we would be switching companies, and have very, very nice day.
I hope great customer service is still the norm in most businesses not just a thing of the past, because typically you could see ill-trained employee in consumer relation on some establishments nowadays. Evey business owner should know that the experience of resolving the issue has a big impact on future purchases, so providing an excellent customer service for the visitor is so important. Looking on the other side of the coin though, I’ve work for 3 years in a retail store before, I’m a bread winner, I know how hard it is to provide quality customer service with minimum wages, little benefits and terrible hours of work. So sometimes if I experienced one bad experience in some establishment, I give them one last chance to make up, then if they do it again, then it’s the end of my visit.