Category Archives: Hints for Managers

Managing Customer Complaints

Posted on by

Managing Customer Complaints

“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it”

Peter Drucker

As business owners, managers or supervisors some of the worst moments in your working experience can involve managing customer complaints (note the word ‘manage’ rather than ‘handle’?)

The experience is often stressful, uncomfortable and unpleasant isn’t it?

Customer complaints have serious ramifications for your business and if not managed well can seriously damage the business. Customer complaints do however provide an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive and enable you to retain the business.

Remember it is estimated that less than 10% of customers complain about customer service, they just go elsewhere and we rarely know why. Don’t dread customer complaints, but instead view them as an opportunity to create a long term customer. A complaint gives your business a second chance!

There are 6 steps in managing a customer complaint:

  1. Let the customer vent their anger

Remain calm, try and keep personalities out of the situation and allow the customer to vent their anger and listen attentively.

  1. Make ‘I’ statements and apologise

Build rapport and build empathy by using ‘I’ statements: “I can understand………..I would be angry” show that you are taking sides WITH the customer. The anger is addressed at the problem and not you.

  1. ‘So what you are saying is…’

Try and understand what the problem is by using effective listening techniques – paraphrase what the customer is saying and ask clarifying questions so that you have a clear understanding of the issue.

  1. ‘This is what we can do….’

Take responsibility for solving their problem and let them know what you can do. It is important to use positive language and offer solutions, options or a course of action. Make sure you gain agreement from them.

  1. End positively

Thank the customer and explain what you intend to do, when and how.

  1. Just ‘do it’

Just like the Nike advertisement ‘just do it’ means providing updates, following up within the agreed time frame and communicating with them (personally is best) when that action has been completed.

This is an example from a few years again when I was managing a vehicle transport company. A transport manifest arrived by fax (yes many years ago) at 4.00 pm and upon reading it I learnt that there was a car arriving within the next 2 hours that was due in Brisbane that night. We were in Wagga Wagga in country New South Wales Australia 1,200 kms (14 hours away) from Brisbane. The car then had to be loaded onto a truck north for Cairns (a further 1,700 km away or 20 hours away).The car was needed by the customer in Cairns in 2 days time for him to pick it up from the airport and drive to his tropical beach holiday destination a further hour’s drive north.

This was Mission Impossible!

It was a physical impossibility to have a car in Cairns nearly 3,000 km away in 2 days even if it was driven there.

Flying a car was not an option!

Should I be like Corporal Jones in the BBC TV series “Dad’s Army” and start panicking?

What happened?

I called the customer (with extreme dread) and explained the situation 3 hours before he was due to board a direct flight from Melbourne to Cairns.

His reaction (Step 1) was dismay although not overt anger – how was he going to get to his holiday house?

I apologised (Step 2) and asked him again (Step 3) what his requirements for transport for his holiday were. He needed to have a car to travel to and around his holiday destination.

I then gave him several options, one being that we would provide a hire car at no cost for his holiday or until his car eventually arrived (Step 4).

He agreed, I thanked him for his understanding (Step 5) and said I would arrange this and get back to him.

A hire car was organised, using my personal credit card to be available at the local Cairns airport lounge for his arrival (Step 6). I then phoned him back just before he boarded the plane. He was very happy with the outcome. He continued to be a client for many years.

Even the most difficult situations can be solved using common sense and the 6 Step approach to managing customer complaints……………

Compare this approach that described in one of my earlier blogs.

It is quite a contrast isn’t it?

Never Never Say These Things…

Posted on by

Never Never Say These Things…

 “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first”

Mark Twain

Too often, unfortunately when service providers, managers and staff fail to manage in a pro-active way, and things fail or do not go the way they expected, they come up with excuses.

What are differences between reasons and excuses?

The measurement for success in business today is performance. Whether you are a pleasant person, honest or related to the boss or is not, is irrelevant if you are not contributing to the business’s performance in a positive way.  Too often we hear about employees being unfairly treated when a business folds or lays off staff, however perhaps rather than blaming ‘someone else’ whether it is the owner, managers, the market or customers the employees could have taken effective action that may have prevented the current situation.

I call this ‘discretionary effort’; the difference in the level of effort one is capable of bringing to an activity or a task, and the effort required only to get by or make do. In other words “going the extra mile”…

Here is a list of phrases to avoid which are excuses, not reasons:

“They didn’t get back to me” – so you did not follow up?

“I thought someone else was taking care of it” – so you don’t take responsibility in your job”?

“No one ever told me” – so you don’t communicate with those around you?

“I didn’t have time” – did you have time to talk around the water cooler or photocopier?

“I didn’t think to ask about that” – so you don’t  think about your job?

If there are roadblocks in the business whose job is it to remove them?

Yours or ‘someone else’s?

Sometimes in business , there are too many people  talking  about their rights (what they think they are entitled to) rather than their responsibilities (taking initiative and being pro-active).

Good business owners and managers love employees who remove road blocks and are positive and pro-active.

My observations over 30 years in business is that if you use excuses like those above then you are the road block! Everybody learns from experience and learning is a ‘state of mind’ – so don’t be a roadblock…

Customer Service

Posted on by

Customer Service

“Thank your customer for complaining and mean it. Most will never bother to complain. They’ll just walk away.” 

Marilyn Suttle

I recently experienced not one, but three examples of appalling customer service from a major Australian retailer which has prompted me to reflect on what really is “customer service”. I ‘phoned 2 different stores and got the same result – the ‘phone was transferred through to the appropriate department until it rang out. I then ‘phoned head office to seek assistance and was transferred to one of the stores again and after waiting for at least 5 minutes, a counter staff member picked up. He was most embarrassed and offered to get the department to call me.  I refused! I had had enough. My complaint via email to head office went unanswered.

Did that surprise you?

Recently I had a business colleague tell me the story of why, after 12 years he had decided to sever the relationship with a major service provider and partner. Despite being a loyal and longstanding customer who always paid within terms and his company being one of their largest customers, he had never met the CEO. When problems arose over service, they the customer, were  accused of being inefficient and unreliable. This certainly appears to have been management denial as covered in one of my earlier blogs.

To cap it off, when the service provider finally met to discuss the less than satisfactory service with the wronged customer, she was told how busy he had been with other customers.

As a customer, do you care about a supplier’s other customers and how busy they have been?

No!  You only care about your own requirements as you are the one paying for their services. You are not interested in their excuses (they are not reasons).  Such excuses make you feel as though you are not to be important enough to generate a relationship with.  You certainly don’t want to know that they were too busy taking care of another client!

Let’s put it another way, no man (apologies for being sexist) would come home late for dinner and use the excuse:

“Sorry I’m late for dinner dear, I just caught up with a girlfriend for a quick drink”

Like all relationships, whether family, social, personal or business, the principles of common courtesy, respect, manners and decency apply.

They are just as important in the professional or commercial world.

So how are you going to prevent this occurring in your organisation…………..??

Being Late. Is it good business etiquette?

Posted on by

Being Late. Is it good business etiquette?

“Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential”

Will Cuppy.

Manners is about respect for other people, whether in business or in a social setting. It is not old-fashioned to have good manners. It has nothing to do with ‘fashion’ or ‘generation’.

Is it OK to be late for a meeting or an appointment?

Too often in business, people run late for meetings and when they arrive, are often ill prepared. They think nothing of drifting into a meeting, 5, 10 or 15 minutes after starting time.

Professional managers do not find this acceptable.

I was recently at a meeting where 6 people were kept waiting in a meeting for 20 minutes, until one team member idled their way in, unprepared and 20 minutes late. That equals 6 people times 20 minutes each or 120 minutes wasted. Yes, 2 hours wasted. How much has that cost the business?

The best thing to do to prevent this wastage is to start the meeting without them. They are unlikely to be late next time.

Although cost is a factor, it is the lack of respect for the other six people in the meeting that is also important, whether you are their manager or the business owner is not relevant.

This lack of respect can flow through the whole organisation and it can tell you a lot about the values being promoted within an organisation.

There are other actions in meetings that are NOT acceptable and show lack of respect:

Making and taking phone calls during meeting. It is both rude and disrespectful.

  1. Checking emails or texts during a meeting.
  2. Not being prepared.

If you can’t give the meeting your time, don’t attend. It is as simple as that.

This manifests itself in other ways. Failure to return phone calls or reply to emails is just plain rude. It is like someone saying good morning to you and you ignoring them. In my experience, most of the people who are late for meetings are generally the same people who are not prepared for meetings and check their texts and take and make phone calls during the meeting.

With important meetings, I always try and be 5 minutes early just in case there is a problem. If you are unavoidably late, call or text 15 minutes before the scheduled time. Its good manners and also shows respect. Much more can be achieved when you show respect. If you show respect, in most cases it will be returned not only making your job easier but by achieving a constructive outcome for the business.

Before I went into business I worked for a business owner who was extremely successful and wealthy. He always opened the door for you, allowing you to enter and leave first and was never late for meetings. Even when we had company team gym sessions, he always made sure he was the last person to take a shower. It goes without saying he was highly respected and managed an exceptionally successful business.

We all lead ‘busy lives’. It’s a cop-out to use that as an excuse. Do you really think that your time is more important than someone else’s?

Apparently much of the success achieved by Nelson Mandela in finally toppling apartheid in South Africa was his ability to treat everybody with respect, including his prison guards on Robben Island. I can remember watching a TV documentary program on Mandela, where he was described as giving people his undivided attention and time. It made people feel valued and important. In the TV program there was a section graphically showing Mandela publically chastising the then President, Thabo Mbeke when he showed a lack of respect for arriving late to a meeting he was to address where Mandela was also a guest of honour.

Remember good etiquette and manners pays off………….so as a business owner, manager or supervisor are you showing people adequate respect?