Your employees and perhaps even you have dealt with these individuals at one time or another – the angry customer.
In jobs that involve a lot of customer service calls, undoubtedly some of your employees have met the wrath of that man or woman who doesn’t like the service, the product they acquired, the prices charged or more.
In order to placate these individuals, you can take the beating like a man or you can write them off as a customer and never have to deal with them again.
For those companies that choose to work with these angry customers, it can take some comforting remarks, coupons and/or discounts on future purchases and more to win them over.…
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For a new small business owner who is seeking to grow his or her business, brand reputation is an important consideration to keep in mind, which is why any negative press about the business can be detrimental to its success. All it takes is one unhappy client or associate, the lightning-fast pace of the internet, and a negative blog post to derail even the best laid plans.
Each of us has different experiences with customer service; some are good while most that we hear about are just horrible. Businesses, no matter how big or small, need to evaluate how well they are serving their customers.
Some people you just can’t please. At least, that’s the truism my grandpa used to say to me. Clearly, grandpa didn’t run a small business. While some people are harder to make happy than others, as a CEO of a small business you can’t just write off difficult clients, unless of course you don’t mind taking a hit in your business.
Technology companies are, unfortunately, almost as well known for having poor customer service as they are for their actual products. Why is that?
So you benchmark your company against others in your industry. Maybe you look at maximizing revenue per full-time employee, increasing first call resolution in your contact center or IT expense as a percent of revenue. How do you compare to your competitors? Is that the right comparison?
Small businesses are famously agile and attuned to the wants and needs of their customers. But as they begin to grow, or as market conditions begin to change, staying on top of customer requirements can be a tricky feat. If relationships become too tenuous, an aggressive competitor will prey on those weaknesses and poach “at risk” customers.
