Image courtesy roland
As soon as you make a customer unhappy, they no longer see you as being professional.
There’s great potential for misunderstanding here, so let me clarify. I’m not saying that you’re unprofessional, I’m saying that unhappy customers SEE YOU as unprofessional.
Now, I don’t mean customers that have to have their passwords reset or something equally small, I’m referring to the customer of the transmission shop that has their tranny fall out a week after it was replaced, or the customer of the florist that arrives at the reception hall the morning of their wedding to find pink carnations instead of yellow roses.
What you must do in these situations is demonstrate, perhaps not for the first time, that you are indeed a professional and will fix the problem to your customer’s satisfaction. It’s for these situations that the phrase, “Every problem is an opportunity” was created.
When you’re solving a problem for a customer, what you’re also doing is recovering your reputation. Thinking of customer service this way – just a little bit selfishly, just a little bit personally – is a good and healthy thing.
