Running a business of any kind that has a customer base means that you will have to be dealing with customers professionally on a daily basis. Even as a business owner, you yourself are a customer of someone else when you leave the office and go shopping, check out the local gardens or even as a patient at a medical practice. While the best advice would be to essentially treat all of your customers how you like to be treated, there are other factors in play that go beyond that simple piece.
By Team Savant
Sometimes there are customers that are just plain difficult and if you have run a business for any length of time then you will undoubtedly have come across these. Sometimes they are just difficult people, but some might have social disabilities or are even trying to get out of paying.
Whatever the situation is though, you should strive to make the situation easier for yourself and fair to the complainant. This can be done by:
Being attentive
Listening to concerns
Always offering a complaint procedure
A customer will always remember a bad experience in your establishment but will spread good word of a positive one, so being attentive helps in a number of ways while just allowing a customer to vent their concerns can go a long way in defusing a situation and offering them a relevant procedure for officially registering a complaint can begin the process of working towards a solution.
Be Professional and Watch Body Language
No one likes inattentive staff, no matter what the business is and an emphasis should be placed on customer service by all employees, including yourself if you want to go so far as to prevent complaints from escalating. Basic interpersonal skills such as being polite and greeting people with a smile is a great start and opens up the interaction to a better experience going forward.
However, care should be taken when interacting with customers to always convey an attitude that they are the most important person in the room and you are only there for them. The most basic form of good communication comes from body language so you should always maintain eye contact, sit or stand up straight and never maintain a defensive posture such as crossing your arms or making negative facial expressions.
Listen to What they Have to Say
No matter how attentive and professional you are there will always be people who make a situation difficult and while many might not be able to help it because of medical or socialised reasons such as someone of an older generation or an individual with learning difficulties, there are some people who seem to just enjoy being awkward and might go out of their way to make what should be a pleasant experience a bad one.
So long as a customer isn’t making any physical threats of violence or being verbally abusive, in which case security should be called, then you must listen to what they have to say and absorb their feelings with a professional attitude, even if they are wrong. More often than not, a complaint isn’t personal and mostly refers to how a business is being run such as having to wait for a long time to be seen or the price of items or a service. Sometimes people just want to vent and you just happen to be the person who is there at that particular moment.
Offer a Valid Solution to the Issue
Following your patient listening to a venting customer, you should always go out of your way to offer a solution to their issue, even if you feel that the customer is wrong. This can help defuse a situation and the customer will feel appreciated that you have listened to their concerns, taken them in and offered a solution.
By solution, don’t just offer a refund or a cash incentive as some people might just be looking for that, but put forward a comprehensive complaints procedure such as an official complaints form whereby they can be dealt with in a professional manner, be sent to HR or head office or a regulating body that deals with your industry. A genuine complainant will appreciate this while someone looking to get out of paying will ignore it, and if you have been professional throughout the entire engagement, you will have nothing to worry about while knowing that you did your best.